Title: Chinese-ness : the meanings of identity and the nature of belonging /
Authors: Huie, Wing Young, 1955-
Year: 2018
Subjects: Huie, Wing Young,; Huie, Wing Young, Travel China.; Chinese Americans Ethnic identity.; Chinese Americans Minnesota Interviews.; Chinese Americans Minnesota Pictorial works.; Chinese Americans Minnesota Biography.; China Relations United States.; United States Relations China.; United States Ethnic relations.
Abstract: "Is Chinese identity personal, national, cultural, political? Does it migrate, become malleable or transmuted? What is authentic, sacred, kitsch? Using documentary and conceptual photographic strategies, acclaimed photographer Wing Young Huie explores the meaning of Chinese-ness in his home state of Minnesota, throughout the United States, and in China. Huie, the youngest of six children and the only one born in the United States, grew up in Duluth, Minnesota, where images of pop culture fed, formed, and confused him. At times his own parents seemed foreign and exotic. His visit to China in 2010 compounded the confusion: his American-ness made him as visible there as his Chinese-ness did in Minnesota. To make sense of his experiences, Huie photographed and interviewed people of Chinese descent and those influenced by Chinese-ness. Their multifaceted perspectives project humor and irony, as well as cultural guilt and uncertainty. In a series of diptychs, Huie wears the clothes of Chinese men whose lives he could have lived, blurring the boundary between photographer and subject. How does Chinese-ness collide with American-ness? And who gets to define those hyphenated abstract nouns? Part meta-memoir and part actual memoir, Chinese-ness reframes today's conversations about race and identity"--
Contents: Mom -- My mother's tongue -- Do I look like I stick out? -- Joe Huie's cafe -- The start -- The meanings of identity / The nature of belonging -- Chinese food -- Panda House -- Tears of happiness -- A life I could've had -- Chop suey community -- Other lives -- The painter -- "I've forgotten that you're Chinese" -- The wanderer -- Americanized -- He called himself Mike -- The holy land -- Finding Jesus in Tennessee -- Jesus Christ superstar -- "They placed an Asian among us" -- The designer -- Big Mac and Coke -- Generations of Chinese-ness -- "Reborn Chinese person" -- Motherland -- First time in the Motherland -- Are you overwhelmed? -- Does speaking Chinese make you Chinese? -- A long way to go -- Lianzhou Camera Association, Lianzhou, China -- The Yao -- A photographic master -- He kind of looks like you -- A tiny particle of a huge power -- Home -- When are you going back? -- Graceful in appearance -- Sexy wing -- The ambiguity of identity -- Anyone who can help me? -- Because you are Chinese -- I have better manners -- The Philadelphia Suns -- Song of the American dream -- Love -- Don't kill Bambi -- "Motherlanded" -- Paper sons and daughters -- Freedom is like a current of water -- You could see Grandpa Harry in his face -- My grandpa is Chinese -- He was so extremely quiet -- Guzheng player -- Perfect being imperfect -- Music has one heart.