Kip Fulbeck - Part Asian, 100% Hapa

part asian 100% hapa

Portraits by Kip Fulbeck Foreword by Sean Lennon Afterword by Paul Spickard Photographs and Introduction copyright 2006 by Kip Fulbeck
Foreword copyright 2006 by Sean Lennon
Afterword copyright 2006 by Paul Spickard All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written
permission from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available. eISBN 978-0-8118-7580-6 Digital Compositing by Derrick Velasquez and Michael Velasquez Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, California 94107 www.chroniclebooks.com hapa (hp) adj. 1.Slang. of mixed racial heritage with partial roots in Asian and/or Pacific Islander ancestry. 2. Slang. a person of such ancestry. [der./ Hawaiian: Hapa Haole (half white)] This project involved several thousand people over three years, via organization, communication, participation, and production. [der./ Hawaiian: Hapa Haole (half white)] This project involved several thousand people over three years, via organization, communication, participation, and production.

I wish to thank everyone involved, and to mention several in particular. Thanks to my family for their continued love and support, to Hapa Issues Forum for their steadfast devotion to promoting Hapa awareness, and to Mikyla Bruder, Brett MacFadden, Alan Rapp, Bridget Watson Payne, and the amazing staff at Chronicle Books for their commitment to producing innovative work. Thanks to my friends Keith Alexander, Lindsay Castro, Jonathan Cecil, Willy Chui, Mary Clark, Casey Copeland, Jenn Crawford, Wei-Ming Dariotis, Jen Diskin, Rebecca Drexler, Kristina Fredriksson, Tejvir Grewall, Amy Hill, Robert Horsting, Stewart David Ikeda, Matt Kelley, Ming-yan Lai, Jaker Lemberger, Sean Lennon, Ronnie Lin, Heather Milne, Cindie Nakashima, Vicki Nam, Victoria Namkung, Dan Nazaretta, Jocelyn Nguyen, Ben Northover, Marky Mark Pasadilla, Joe Perez, Harry Reese, Joel Sherman, Paul Spickard, Phel Steinmetz, Kellie Stoelting, Kevin Tam, Andres Torres, LeeAnn Trusela, Derrick Velasquez, Michael Velasquez, and Teresa Williams-Lon. I also wish to express my gratitude to the Department of Art, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, and Academic Senate at the University of California, Santa Barbara; to my agent, Faye Bender; to my research assistants, Krista Bergenstal, Lizvet Corral, Jean Lee, Tracey On, and Jaclyn Tamizato; and to Lynda Barry and Jim Goldberg for inspiration. Finally, thanks to all the generous people who opened their homes, schools, and workplaces for us to photograph in, and to all the Hapa participants and supporters throughout the country. Your belief in the project made this book possible.

Kip Fulbeck
Santa Barbara, CA

kip fulbeck You dont look Chinese. A random time, a random place, and Im still here. I know this routine inside out. Ive got it memorized, can do it blindfolded. If I answer English or Irish, Ill get the No, what else are you? response. (insert physical feature). (insert physical feature).

And if I answer American, Im in for a longer conversation than Im usually in the mood for. What are you? I answer the question every day of my lifedepending on the day itself, the location, my hair, or what Im eating or doing. I get mistaken for Native American, Filipino, Hawaiian, African American (especially when my head is shaved), Mexican, Cuban, Middle Eastern, Indian... Ive listened to a black woman chastise me for denying my African heritage and a First Nations member push me to register my status. Im greeted in Spanish, Farsi, and pidgin, all the while being escorted to the various back tables in various Chinese restaurants and handed forks (the long hair, non-Gucci, tattoo tablesthe brown tables). On the street, interracial couples approach and scrutinize my face, wondering out loud what their future child may look like, and I learned to smile back when they do it.

Theyre just curious, right? Our country is lazy. And Im not talking about obesity levels. Im talking whatever. Were uncomfortable with people who dont fit neatly into boxes because when they dont do so, it requires effort on our part. Its easier to keep things uncomplicated, trouble free. We ask people how theyre doing when most of the time we dont really want to know.

We follow meeting someone with questions like So, what do you do? and expect simple and easy answers. More than that, we usually give simple and easy answers when defining our own lives, generally doing so in terms of vocation. How bizarre is that? We cant give a straight answer to the what-kind-of-music-do-you-like question (note: answering everything here is a cop-out), but well happily label ourselves with real estate, pharmacist, construction, IT, or television. Im no different here. I work as an artist, a writer, a performer, a teacher, a lifeguardbut I know its easier to just say professor. People treat me better, and it makes my mother happy.

I might even get a better table in the Chinese restaurant. Might. Compartmentalization is easy, even inviting. At the individual level, we create distinct and telling titles of associationdelineating our personal relationships into business, family, or social when the categories and personal relationships themselves continually blur and redefine. (How many of us raise our eyebrows when our partner mentions a new friend?) Its the same at the global level, when we cheer our own countrys Olympic athletes rather than the pushing of human accomplishment, when we reduce the complexities of foreign policy into good and evil. Our country and its individuals continually seek out absolutes and simplicity, when absolutes dont exist.

Besides, absolutes, to be honest, arent all that interesting. Whats interesting is ambiguity. Whats interesting is the haziness, the blurrings, the undefinables, the space and tension between people, the area between the margins that pushes us to stop, to question. Hapas know the question inside out. What are you? And we know we cant answer it any more than we can choose one body part over another. We love the question.

We hate the question. And we know many times people arent satisfied with our answers. (In my case, the only people who tell me Im not Chinese are Chinese peopleincluding most of my relatives.) For what its worth, I stopped checking Chinese on the ethnicity question somewhere in my teens, on the same day I decided I wanted to be both accurate and honest. It just made sense. I figured if I didnt fit in a boxwhether on a job application, school form, health questionnaire, or arrest record (another story), then I wasnt going to lie to make myself fit it anymore. I figured its the box idea that needed to change.

Twenty years later and not much is different. A few small steps here and there: at thirty-five, I was allowed to answer the U.S. Census accurately for the first time; scores of Hapa celebrities now permeate popular film, television, print, music, and sports; millions of us out there and growing... I look at these facts and I cant figure it out. How can mainstream Hapa awareness still be almost nonexistent? Why is multiracial still limited to a black/white paradigm in the national mind-set? Is it simply because until now Hapas had no title, no name, no way to even identify as a group? Is it because so many of us never thought about or cared about it ourselves, never considering ourselves part of something larger? Were some of us reluctant to even acknowledge our ever-expanding group of similarly mixed individuals, pleased in our role as the special one, the exotic oneor conversely, content to blend in and

Next page