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Fresh Talk / Daring Gazes: Conversations on Asian American Art

by Elaine H. Kim, Margo Machida, and Sharon Mizota, Eds.
University of California Press, Berkeley, 2003
233 pp., illus. Trade, $39.95
ISBN: 0-520-23535-5.

Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent, Belgium

stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be

There is no doubt that Asian Americans have suffered severe discrimination over the past century. Many were emprisoned in concentration camps before and during the Second World War, some have been accused of anti-American activities and generally they have been regarded as second or third class citizens——if citizens at all——good enough to do only the most menial jobs. Individuals have risen to high places, but they are the exception. Most still live in ghetto's, whether by choice or by necessity, and even thought they perform far above average at universities, they are still represented far below proportionality in the media, in public office, and in all kinds of institutions, with the exception maybe of academic circles.

In the first part of Fresh Talk, Daring Gazes, Elaine H. Kim, Professor of Asian American and Comparative Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, follows the road taken by a number of Asian American artists from the early 20th century on and analyzes the range of possible positions they have taken in the debate on their place in American art, in general. Some have chosen to emphasize their cultural origins, their identity as Asian Americans, and the particular flavour their background gives to their being American. Others have tried to be just American among Americans, neither stressing nor denying their heritage. The similarities of the problems black and women artists are faced with abound.

The second part of the book, Gallery, consists of 24 colour images of works by Asian American artists, each with a short description and interpretation by artist and webdesigner Sharon Mizota. Brief as they are, they beautifully illustrate the possible relations between the artistic expression, the political stance, and the technical proficiency of the artists, and they are a perfect upbeat for what follows in the third and final part: 'Interchanges'. This is a collection of short interpretative essays by 24 commentators, each paired with one of the artists from the second part. The contributors are cultural critics, artists, social activists, curators, and scholars from African American, Latino, and Native American heritages. "Encountering artists and works of art with which they were largely unfamiliar afforded the writers in Fresh Talk an unusual opportunity to reflect on how they construct meaning when looking at and writing about art, and on what culturally and historically specific frames of reference they bring to that process."

Of course, not all of these essays are as brilliant as Odili Donald Odita's reflections on the work of Vietnamese photographer Pipo Nguyen-Duy in the light of his own forced migration from Biafra, but none is less than surprising and eye-opening——at least for this European reader.

As a bonus to the introductions and the conversations, the book has short biographical notes on all the artists and commentators, which comes in handy for further study. And if that is not enough, it is simply a very beautifully laid-out book. A pleasure to read and to browse through, one would almost call it a coffee-table book, without the negative overtones of that label.

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