Charlie Chan

It's very well worth reading. I learned so much!It was hard to read, because there is so much about the racist history of Hawai'i and USA, and the shameful annexation of Hawai'i by USA. I am impressed by Yunte Huang's English. Very precise and beautiful. It's hard to remember that this is not his first language, that he learned it by listening to an illegal radio broadcast... and then improved after having moved to USA. My experience was also colored by the fact that I was reading this along with several other books;[b:Beloved 6149 Beloved Toni Morrison https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347984578l/6149.SY75.jpg 736076] by Toni Morrison - which is about the lives of black slaves before and after liberation[b:A Room of One's Own 18521 A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327883012l/18521.SY75.jpg 1315615] by Virginia Woolf - which is about the early days of women's suffrage[b:White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism 43708708 White Fragility Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism Robin DiAngelo https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1548478235l/43708708.SY75.jpg 58159636] - which is about the fear of having to share the “dibs” with all the other human beings in one's communityEven [b:The Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy 20706293 The Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy Laini Taylor https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403167239l/20706293.SX50.jpg 40026186], [b:Mariel of Redwall 7993 Mariel of Redwall (Redwall, #4) Brian Jacques https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1299761476l/7993.SY75.jpg 1177243], [b:Red Queen 22328546 Red Queen (Red Queen, #1) Victoria Aveyard https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1449778912l/22328546.SY75.jpg 25037051], and [b:Dark and Deepest Red 44218347 Dark and Deepest Red Anna-Marie McLemore https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1569251791l/44218347.SY75.jpg 68749682] touch the themes of exploitation and racism. It was also interesting that here we have a Chinese person who doesn't find yellowface inherently offensive. Makes me think about all the things we just automatically classify as racist (or something else “bad”) without thinking about if it is or not; the reason why “politically correct” and “social justice warrior” have become “bad words”.(Also, OF COURSE it would have been better if they had used a Chinese person to play the Chinese person. OF COURSE it would have been better if Charlie Chan's character had not been some of the things it was, BUT it was not all bad. Also, OF COURSE it would have been better if there had been more, a lot more Chinese characters of every kind in USonian movies during the 20th century, so that people wouldn't have associated all Chinese with the few characters that did exist - and of course it would have been better if the people wouldn't associate people with movie characters at all. BUT - it was not all bad. There were some very good things there as well, and it's these good things Yunte Huang brings up, together with the bad things.)I was thinking about the fact that PC is washing away even the few depictions of diversity and cleaning up the history so that it will become impossible to even explain to people that there is a reason why we still speak about racism, 60 years after the Civil Rights Movement. That even though we might have the same rights and privileges on paper, we don't, because of the inherent xenophobia of human race. To erase all “yellowfaces” from the history, we'll make it impossible to discuss about it, to understand why it happened - which is more important than the fact that it happened - and to educate people to understand why none of those things is good. We'll have Cloud Atlas with people in all-the-colors-faces, and people don't understand why it is problematic.