A View from the Bottom

Orientalist representations of the Asian male body as effeminate, soft, or childlike have permeated Western society to the point that artistic reactions that promote Asian males as tough and aggressive have become easily celebrated for their resistance to American imperial culture. While the fame of martial artists such as Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan have generated hardened stereotypes of Asian American men, their forms of aggressive masculinity have maintained a deep trench for opposing American racism, as we see in the anger of the blog Angry Asian Man and the brash hip-hop style of Eddie Huang's memoir Fresh Off the Boat (2013). The wholesale dismissal of Asian male effeminacy is also firmly embedded within the foundations of Asian American literature, from Frank Chin’s plays and essays to Carlos Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart (1946) and Louis Chu’s Eat a Bowl of Tea (1961). Literary texts by Asian American men have continued to rally around denials of Asian American effeminacy, reading it as a stereotype that places the Asian American male into a weaker, apolitical position, thus permitting white men to seduce Asian female bodies and to rationalize American military attempts to act as security agents for the Pacific Rim.

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