The fight never ends~ Viva la revoluccion.

http://wiki.feministsf.net/index.php?title=RaceFail_09

This wiki does a decent job of providing a general overview. This was the first kerfuffle. Basically, Elizabeth Bear depicted black men with big penises as being tamed by sex with white women. (You really can’t make this shit up.) At least this is my memory of it. A lot of internet ink has been spilled on this damn thing. People called her racist. She got offended. Elizabeth Bear is a fairly prolific and established SF/fantasy writer. Several SF writers, editors, publishing folk jumped to her defense. And we’re talking like pretty major folk, big editors at Tor, etc. Will Shetterly is personally quite offensive to me, because he seems to think that people who decry racism should shift their focus to classism, cos there isn’t racism, but boy-o there IS classism. He conducts these experiments in living on social benefits, to prove a point. Of course, he is white and has a trust fund, so I’m not sure what point he was trying to make.

It was pretty gross. Not shocking unfortunately to this jaded soul, but gross. And I only touched on a tiny bit of the madness.

http://rydra-wong.livejournal.com/155427.html

This offers some more insight/more drama.

(captcha is onto me. I am “ushering the”)

Writing and acting (and the movie business in general) are two different things. With acting, you have to go all out. You have to burn the ships and drive forward. The craft requires that you be out there.

With writing, you can work anywhere, any time, and you can work a little at a time, as long as you are consistent. People who think, “Oh I can be a writer if only I didn’t have to work all the time.” are just deluding themselves and procrastinating. You just got to maximize your time and efforts.

And I hate to say this, but the Internet is a big distraction. If people that took the same time and effort writing comments on forum posts to write their own works (books, screenplays, etc), then we’d have a lot more quality works of story telling.

So let me get back to writing before I distract myself any longer

Are you from Mama Nabi’s blog? If so, it’s nice meeting you!

I agree with you; it’s not just an Asian thing. Asian writers complain about being broke, but White writers also complain about that. Connections are everything. Look at Tori Spelling–would they have put her out there with Shannon and Jennie if she weren’t Aaron’s daughter? Probably not.

It’s exactly like you say: there just aren’t many of us within the infrastructure, so it’s hard to break out.

For writers, it’s also a problem of breaking out of our current mindset. It’s a simple question, yet one that is very hard to answer or live: how does one independently create when there are so many cultural forces working with and against us?

I also agree with you about literary fiction, which is partly why my own novel is probably closer to genre fiction. Have you read “Banana Boys?” That was total genre fiction, and yet it came closer to reality than many works that would be considered by most to be more “literary.”

What is Race Fail? I tried googling it, but there are many many many links that come up…

What I think is particular to Asian-Americans is our lack of presence within the infrastructures/systems, i.e. the studio machines, production companies and publishing houses. OK, this may not even be unique to Asian-Americans as it applies pretty equally to other people of color. Anyways, people in studios and publishing houses, always goes a long way to advancing Asian-American actors and writers.

The question of breaking into the industry aside, I think you have to have another job if you like paying rent consistently, buying food regularly and having medical insurance. Ignoring the issue of travel, acting really does not provide steady income. Even the biggies that make money have to learn how to budget properly because of distribution. Dunno, I think having secondary work is necessary. I also think that it’s good to have perspective. Acting may be perceived as glamorous and fabulous but in the end of the day, it’s still work and it’s still a job, even if you consider it to be a vocation.

I am not one for romanticizing creative endeavors. I think it’s all work in the end of the day, you just gotta figure out if you love it and if you can sustain that work and then ask if that work sustains you. For some people, that means having a back up. For some people, it means going in whole hog.

Of course this does not resolve the never-ending orientification (is that even a word?) and model-minority crap that seems to pervade Asian-American writing. This may also explain my gripe in general with a lot of literary fiction. If I were ever to seriously try to write, it would be genre fiction all the way, though genre fiction lately has been showing its racist colors too. Did you catch the RaceFail of 09 on lj? If not, google and poke about. It can be a huge time suck, it’s just sad to be re-affirmed about the stupidity of people. Not shocking or even surprising, for me at least, just sad. Ah well, the fight goes on.

Neutral Observer,

I can’t mention Min Jin without mentioning the fact that she broke my heart. She tossed it down on the floor and stamped it out as if it were a cigarette. Crushed me. Min Jin broke my heart because:

a) She’s really good looking. (Yes, Larry, you’re right, you know my tastes.)

b) She spoke often in interviews about helping Asian men, and

c) with respect to b), she wrote Free Food For Millionaires. See my review here:
http://newexcursion.blogspot.com/2008/04/free-sex-for-rice-chasers-review-of-min.html

d) This all happened after freakin’ 600 somewhat pages. It was a slow kill, kind of like getting stabbed with a butter knife and having your killer twist it in little circles.

Yup, a story where all the Asian men are either dorks or caricatures and where the White man (surprise, surprise) is the epitome of masculinity. I’m sorry, Min Jin, but you broke my heart. That’s a bait and switch. And when you take into account that Min Jin is attractive, that’s a heartbreaker.

Min Jin, you need a little Dionne Warwick in your life. This one is for you. My first bigWOWO song dedication of 2010!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfPaPH-qKeI&feature=PlayList&p=A5B846C8EC6A641B&index=1

I think for writers and other artists, they have to take a strategy different from “normal” people.

Namely, you have to get a job that maximizes the time and energy you can spend on your writing/art and minimizes the work required from your job itself–while at the same time also providing a salary that you can live on.

This job could be anything as long it fulfills these criteria. I mean, one could work as a circus clown if it met these requirements.

I know that Frank Chin worked on the railroad, for instance.

“”How did Min Jin break your heart?”

I think Byron has a strange and unnatural obsession with Min Jin Lee for some reason.