Eric C. Wat's oral history of Los Angeles gay (East) Asian(/West Pacific Islander) men of the 1960s and 70s is a revised version of an M.A. thesis in American Studies he did at California State, Fullerton (which is in Orange County). It is a very interesting book that contains many insights (some Wat's, many from those he interviewed). It was the first book-length single-authored GAPI community study.* Although there are materials on individual GAPI life experiences in some anthologies and some novels and poetry collection written by GAPI men, there were only social science research articles on three GAPI populations (Japanese Americans in Los Angeles, Vietnamese Americans in Orange County, and Filipino Americans in New York City) for me to discuss in my 1996 book American Gay—none of which Wat mentions.

Although he failed to find the (scanty) social science literature on GAPIs, Wat draws effectively on some of the sociology of social movements literature. (However, not seeming to realize how the resource mobilization theory would be helpful in sorting out what white allies and American-born men of Asia/Pacific descent brought to the organization Asian/Pacific Lesbians and Gays (A/PLG) that was the first and foremost LA GAPI organization.)

In his refreshingly candid methodological appendix, Wat notes his initial animus toward APLG as site for white gay men ("rice queens," ) to ensnare Asian men ("rice"#). Some of the "old-timers" he interviewed explained to Wat that the amount of GAPI invisibility within the gay organization (A/PLG changed its name in 1997 to Asian/Pacific Gays and Friends) was that many of the GAPI members did not want to be publicly identified as gay, for instance, by marching in the annual Gay Pride Parade. Wat learned that all the leadership roles in A/PLG had been reserved for GAPI men (there were some auxiliary activities for white members)

I am not entirely sure that Wat also learned that A/PLG and the exclusively GAPI organizations that formed later were dominated by those who grew up in the United States (who were fluent in English and familiar with American ways) and that new immigrants from Asian and the West Pacific felt shut out of influencing the groups' agendas and participating in meetings. American-born persons of Asian/Pacific descent frequently denigrate those who have not attained their own degree of acculturation as "FOBs" ("fresh off the boat," though in recent decades, the immigrants have mostly arrived on airplanes). Immigrants (at least those who emigrated after education in other languages and countries) tend to feel insecure about their command of English (which besides being the national language, is the lingua franca between those with different Asian or Pacific languages) and understanding of how Americans do things. (Not that they are filled with admiration for the Americanized persons who look like them, condescend to them, distance themselves from such embarrassing alienness as faltering English syntax and "accents" or seeking established white male partners. The American born APIs seem to be rootless and ignorant of their heritage to many API immigrants, gay and other.)

In particular, the immigrants' attitude toward white men who desire GAPIs tends to differ from the attitude of those of Asian/Pacific descent who grew up as a minority in white America (especially those who grew up in America east of the coastal mountains). Gay white men are more exotic—and probably more useful—to acculturating immigrants than to American-born GAPIs. And those who grew up in a homogeneous Asian or Pacific Islander culture (or even a majority-API one such as Hawai'i) have more confidence in their ancestral language(s) and culture(s) of which increasingly monolingual English-speaking American-born persons of API descent have. Pan-Asian(/Pacific) identity is advocated almost entirely in English and by those with faltering or no command of API languages, whereas those less comfortable in English prefer to associate with others who speak their particular mother tongue rather than other kinds of Asians or Pacific Islanders. This is to say that pan-Asian identity and organizing is at least one step removed from being comfortable in some particular Asian or Pacific Islander culture and language and may, to some degree, be a reaction to loss of specific roots.

Wat's analysis mostly passes over the articulations of a native/immigrant chasm (although votes on California initiative measures show that anti-immigrant sentiment is widespread among the children of API and Latino immigrants, not just white racism). He deserves credit for consciously seeking to provide material for analyses beyond those he makes in the book by including lengthy quotations from those he interviewed. Moreover, he is at least partly conscious of an animus (pre-existing his research) at GAPI/GWM (gay white male) liaisons. He does not condemn such relations (as long as the white men know their place and stay subordinate...), but like some other GAPI activists (e.g., the contributors to the GAPI-Canadian anthology Rice) recurrently shows a bias for GAPI-GAPI ("sticky rice") relations and relationships and double standards. For instance, he suggests that GWMs placing ads are too lazy to go out and meet people, but does not cast similar aspersions on GAPIs who place ads.

The logic and basis for his view that the defeat of the US in Vietnam somehow led to viewing API males as effeminate elude me, and I think that he and other GAPI intellectuals fail to register the impacts of many representations of Japanese and Vietnamese POW facilities on white males with masochistic fantasies, While it is undeniable that representations of Asian-American hypermasculinity are rare in movies, representations of fearless, masculine Asian warriors (samurai, ninja. kung-fu, World War II) are widely diffused. Toshiro Mifune, Bruce Lee, Jet Li, et al. do not appear on screen as delicate lotus blossoms to be ripped open by dominating white men. Also, the equation "white=masculine" ignores pervasive representations in popular culture of nonwhite (black and Latino) masculinities, even if many of these (gangster masculinity) are as negative as are those of Japanese and Vietnamese prison-camp commanders and guards.

Having gone on at considerable length already, I want to balance my skepticism about papering over native/immigrant differences and failing to register representations of Asian masculinity in movies by mentioning a point Wat makes that I had never thought about: that the white men who sought out GAPI sexual partners were more likely to be men who had be stationed across the Pacific in doing military service. This is a plausible hypothesis that deserves testing.

There are many interesting observations and stories in Wat's book. I wish that the book had more of a conclusion instead of branching out to include material from one South Asian in regard to later organizations in the last chapter. I wish that Wat's very interesting discussion of editing recorded conversation was supplemented by some discussion of his sampling (which seems to over-represent those who wanted A/PLG to be political (and exclusively Asian in membership) and to under-represent those who wanted it to be social (and not racially exclusive)). Nonetheless, I am glad to have the multiple perspectives Wat elicited, transcribed, and included in a path-breaking study that is a significant contribution to gay studies and Asian-American studies.

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This is another contribution to this year's gay/lesbian history/culture writeoff. Links to all the others appear on my profile page.

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NOTES

* The only other one to date in Global Divas by Martin Manalansan IV on Filipinos in New York City.

# "Rice queen" is clearly a pejorative label for those judged to have an aberrant taste (judged as aberrant by more than a few GAPIs as well as by white gay men not attracted to GAPI bodies). It is even blocked by the epinions content filter. "Rice" is a less-than-laudatory metaphor for rice-eaters (the parallel is "potatoes" for white men, failing to distinguish the dietary patterns of southern and northern Europe). People digest rice (the grain), but there is an implication that "rice queens" consume rice without digesting difference (even though racial difference is a conscious goal) and prey on helpless GAPIs (Wat uses "predatory" in reference to "rice queens"). Neither Wat nor others of his anti-miscegenation view seem to consider that a "rice queen" is a kind of "queen," and that "queen" is not a term marking masculinity. "QUeens" are presumed to be sexual receptors rather than insertors. In the personal ads (I am analyzing), the ratio of bottoms to tops is 3:1 for "GWM seeking GAM" ads and 1:1 for "GAM seeking GWM" ads. In this market—and I am quite sure in others—it is not domineering, rapacious whites and raped/emasculated/submissive GAPI males. Moreover, it does not take an extensive knowledge of American culture to notice that hypermasculinity is often attributed to nonwhites (blacks and Latinos), though Wat and the contributors to Rice claim that there is a "white=masculine" equation in North American popular culture. They also seem oblivious to masculine Asian images





Recommended: Yes