Words and Steel

Thank you to everyone that has read, commented, reblogged, or just passed along without reading my post on Asian American political possibilities. As I continue writing my dissertation (I am paid, kind of, for something after all), I am reminded more and more of the need to always connect the work back to the community— of the obligation I have to share some of the little I’ve learned in the hopes it will resonate, challenge, or anger folks, and in return, to keep learning from folks, to keep being pushed to keep my head out of the clouds in jargon and theory and my feet firmly on the ground.

But anyway, that’s not the point of writing this. I just wanted to share something relevant from my research, actually by the poet whose work, life, and political vision this chapter is centered on. Al Robles—who passed in 2009, rest in power— was, in short, an incredible man. His poetry, his knowledge, needs to be read by everyone. Not just Filipino Americans or Asian Americans, but anyone that dreams of and struggles for real racial and social justice in the world today.

A few important thoughts from his beautiful, poetic article, “Hanging on to the Carabao’s Tail” (which I’ve linked to below) that particularly move me, remind me of the purpose of my work as a Filipino American Studies scholar, my life as a queer woman of color, all of it. While this piece is addressed to Asian American poets, it more than applies to students, activists, workers, all of us in the struggle.

How comfortable should be we, now, in the Asian American Studies department and Ethnic Studies? Should we bury ourselves up in the classrooms, wrap ourselves up with paperwork and call it quits because we have finally acquired teaching jobs? We must always be alert and continue to foster the need for change—social change, education, but most of all to strive for creativity. The institutions can be a dying breed left in some decadent age. They provide nothing but monographs, etc.

But we need them anyway like we need the whiteman, white king powder soap. As Asian Americans, it was essential to dwell on our identity, to feel the need to find out who we are. This was not just mere talk. This has been the stepping stone of Asian American poetry. Yet, however, no matter how brown, black, yellow, or red we are— whether we like it or not, we should live as one tribal family, not dividing the communities of poets running amok.

… What is the range of our vision? What is our range as Asian American poets? We see only as far as our expression in life. If we cannot see the face across the street on the other side, we will breed our own isolation.

…Though each of us may follow different paths, and need to make a living- our brothers, the Navajos, the Hopis, the Apaches, the Pomos (all of them link with Asians) and it is this tribal link to mother earth that we share together. We must remember that the uranium was stolen from the Sacred Land of the Hopis and Navajos to kill and destroy an Asian country of mothers, fathers, and children. How ironic! Our tribal family is more than just across the way; they are brothers and sisters under the same skin; they cross their blood with ours—the plight and struggle. They are not a mere historical picture in some phoney two-bit Hollywood movie. No!

For the Native American Indians, the Chicanos, and the Blacks all speak to us as brothers under the same skin—keen observers, sufferers; for we must not lose sight or forget it was through them, knowing ‘their association makes a difference to the outcome of their lives’. What is the commitment of Asian American poets—to create, foremost…a family tribal connection. The most important force of Asian American poets is ‘not merely how he gets a living, but how he decides about the uses of his time when he is not writing’.

If I do not go off outside myself, say though Walnut Grove, Locke, Watsonville and Salinas, Manilatown, J-Town, and Chinatown, then I no longer can see my people… Recording the lives of Third World people is one thing- to survive is another. So we must embrace all those who came first, that suffered: the Issei, the Chinese, the manongs, along with the Blacks, the Chicanos, the Vietnamese, the Koreans, the Native American Indians, all Third World people.

We all share the same commitments to our people. We must always return to the things that make us belong, so that we can break away and come back fresh […] we must always be in the company of the poor, the oppressed, the lonely—to bring us closer to the reality of ourselves… in the tribal company of brown, black, red, and yellow brothers and sisters under the same skin.

Al Robles, Hanging on to the Carabao’s Tail