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C H I WING YOUNG HUIE N E S E The Meanings of Identity and the Nature of Belonging - N E S MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY PRESS S Huie_Chineseness_int.indd 2 8/9/18 3:34 PM Huie_Chineseness_int.indd 3 8/9/18 3:34 PM CONTENTS 1 PROLOGUE 66 Does speaking Chinese make you Chinese? 3 Mom 69 A long way to go 5 My mother’s tongue 72 Lianzhou Camera Association, 7 Do I look like I stick out? Lianzhou, China 8 Joe Huie’s Café 74 The Yao 9 The start 81 A photographic master 93 He kind of looks like you 11 THE MEANINGS OF IDENTITY / 97 A tiny particle of a huge power THE NATURE OF BELONGING 99 HOME 13 CHINESE FOOD 99 When are you going back? 13 Panda House 108 Graceful in appearance 15 Tears of happiness 110 Sexy Wing 16 A life I could’ve had 111 The ambiguity of identity 18 Chop suey community 114 Anyone who can help me? 23 OTHER LIVES 117 BECAUSE YOU ARE CHINESE 23 The painter 119 I have better manners 26 “I’ve forgotten that you’re Chinese” 123 The Philadelphia Suns 27 The wanderer 127 Song of the American dream 30 Chinese-ness + Latinx-ness 132 Love 31 Not at home in his home state 136 The first hunt 31 For the first time he blended in 140 “motherlanded” 36 He called himself Mike 141 Gooey noodles Publication of this book is supported, in part, by a generous gift Manufactured in Canada 37 The Holy Land from the Chinese Heritage Foundation Fund of The Minneapolis 39 I am you 143 PAPER SONS AND DAUGHTERS Foundation. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 42 Finding Jesus in Tennessee 145 Freedom is like a current of water Text and images copyright © 2018 by Wing Young Huie. Other The paper used in this publication meets the minimum 43 Jesus Christ Superstar 148 You could see Grandpa Harry in his face materials copyright © 2018 by the Minnesota Historical requirements of the American National Standard for Infor- 44 “They placed an Asian among us” 149 My grandpa is Chinese Society. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used mation Sciences— Permanence for Printed Library Materials, 47 The designer 151 He was so extremely quiet or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written ANSI Z39.48- 1984. permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied 49 Big Mac and Coke in critical articles and reviews. For information, write to the International Standard Book Number 52 Three generations of Chinese- ness 155 GUZHENG PLAYER Minnesota Historical Society Press, 345 Kellogg Blvd. W., St. 56 155 Perfect being imperfect Paul, MN 55102- 1906. ISBN: 978- 1- 68134- 042- 5 (hardcover) “Reborn Chinese person” 158 Music has one heart www.mnhspress.org Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data available 61 MOTHERLAND upon request. 61 161 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Minnesota Historical Society Press is a member of the First time in the motherland Association of University Presses. 63 Are you overwhelmed? Huie_Chineseness_int.indd 4 8/21/18 12:24 PM Huie_Chineseness_int.indd 5 8/9/18 3:34 PM PROLOGUE I AM THE YOUNGEST of six and the only one in my Chinese- ness made me stick out in Minnesota-land. family not born in China. Instead, I was conceived Seemingly, just my attitude and gait were dead give- and oriented in Duluth, Minnesota. As a Chinese- aways, even before I opened my mouth to speak my American, it took me quite a while to realize just how broken Chinese. You can look in the mirror every day much weight that little hyphen carried. My father and never really see yourself. owned Joe Huie’s Café, a typical chop suey joint, but So what am I? How does my Chinese-ness collide it was images of pop culture that fed, formed, and with my Minnesota-ness and my American-ness? And confused me. The everyday realities of my family who gets to define those abstract hyphenated nouns? and myself were seldom reflected in that visual land- These were the underlying questions of this project, scape, to the point that it caused my own parents to which is part documentary, part meta- memoir, and seem foreign and exotic, while I became a stranger part actual memoir, as I collected an array of photo- and a riddle to myself. graphic answers and perspectives throughout Min- Going to China for the first time in 2010 com - nesota, in various regions of the United States, and pounded the confusion. My American- ness made me in China. You don’t have to be Chinese to experience stick out in my motherland perhaps more than my Chinese- ness. 1 Huie_Chineseness_int.indd 6 8/9/18 3:34 PM Huie_Chineseness_int.indd 1 8/9/18 3:34 PM Mom My parents’ lives before my birth were incomprehen- her homeland and spent the rest of her eighty- five sible to me. Up until her mid- thirties, Mom raised my years on Fifth Street in Duluth, taking care of my next sister and four brothers in a tiny farming village— it oldest siblings and me while tending to our little brick consisted of seven houses—in the Toisan (Cantonese house and the garden out in back. At night she sat by pronunciation) area of China. Then in 1953, she left her bed writing letters to relatives back in China. Me and my mom, experimenting with infrared film, Duluth, Minnesota, about 1980 PROLOGUE — 3 Huie_Chineseness_int.indd 2 8/9/18 3:34 PM Huie_Chineseness_int.indd 3 8/9/18 3:34 PM My mother’s tongue The first words I ever uttered were in Toisan hua, strange, but it was my normal. My cultural shame the dialect spoken by my mother. But by the time I didn’t set in until much later. started kindergarten, I spoke English like the native Mom always sat in this chair, and the TV was usu- I was, and the process of losing my mother’s tongue ally on. She occasionally watched The Lawrence Welk had begun. I have no memory of ever speaking Chi- Show on Saturday nights—otherwise it was just noise nese to my father or my siblings, always English, to her. My mom taught me a lot, but whatever influ- while the only person I ever spoke to in Chinese was ence she had could not compete with what came out my mother, who never had the opportunity to learn of that box. Popular culture did not reflect the reali- English. ties of my family, but it was so overwhelming that I As I got older, the communication with my mom became what I saw. worsened. When I tell people this, most think it Mom, Francis Ford Coppola at the Oscars, and a photograph of Vice President Walter Mondale, personally signed to Joe Huie, Duluth, Minnesota, 1975 4 — PROLOGUE PROLOGUE — 5 Huie_Chineseness_int.indd 4 8/9/18 3:34 PM Huie_Chineseness_int.indd 5 8/9/18 3:34 PM Do I look like I stick out? This is my first- grade class picture. Do you see me? I have come to realize that for most of my adoles- Throughout much of my public education, I was the cence, I thought I was like everyone else. I read the only Asian student, not just in my class, but in the same books, watched the same TV shows and Holly- entire school. In high school, when another Asian kid wood movies. But you don’t grow up with a mirror in showed up, I avoided him. I don’t think I realized I was front of you. The people around you are your mirror. avoiding someone just because he kind of looked like You are what you see. I had forgotten what I looked me. It wasn’t until well into adulthood and my photo- like, and so when I saw this other Asian, I was really graphic career that I started to confront my “ethno- seeing myself for the first time. And what I saw made centric” filter. me uncomfortable. Nettleton Elementary, Duluth, Minnesota 6 — PROLOGUE PROLOGUE — 7 Huie_Chineseness_int.indd 6 8/9/18 3:34 PM Huie_Chineseness_int.indd 7 8/9/18 3:34 PM The start I bought my first camera, a Minolta SLR, when I was I don’t really remember my father speaking directly twenty. A couple of years later I earned my BA in to me until I started working for him, and even then journalism, intending to become a reporter. But after the conversation was work- related. His meticulous taking a one- week workshop from the iconic street instructions on how to cut the pies was as memorable photographer Garry Winogrand, I began to harbor as any fatherly advice he gave. And so with the start of ambitions of becoming an artist. I had never once my career, I decided to give myself permission to ask heard my immigrant parents utter the word art. As Joe Huie questions I had never dared to raise— to ask far as I know, they never set foot in a museum. Their not as a son, but as a reporter. main concern was the family’s survival and sending I have since photographed thousands of strangers, money back to relatives in China. My being an artist and photographing my father was not all that differ- was as incomprehensible to them as being a farmer ent. Scrutinizing him through the camera lens and in Toisan was to me.