Diary of a Mad Yellow Woman

Courtesy of author Darrell Y. Hamamoto¹:

Professor [Harry Kitano of UCLA] places great store in the notion that romantic "love" plays a preponderant role in interracial marriages. Contrary to this dubious explanation, it is conceivable that the high rate of outmarriage (particularly for females) is indicative of the favorable opportunity cost it represents for the Japanese American spouse who is marrying "up" (and therefore "out of") the racial/gender hierarchy, where white males occupy a superordinate position. Dianne Kawashima might indeed be marrying Tim Morris out of "love," but that very concept is historically constructed. What three decades ago was considered to be "forbidden love" is now viewed as acceptable because Asian women, with their favorable exposure in the media, have become more "in vogue" as partners for white males. In addition, the persistent desexualization of the Asian male might also help contribute to the flight of Asian females, who do not perceive their ethnic counterparts as desirable partners in romance or marriage. Viewed in this light, the high rate of outmarriage for Japanese Americans might well be interpreted as the material outcome of an interlocking system of sexism and racism rather than a matter of interracial couples "voting with their hearts," as Kitano argues.

In response, I only have this to say:

Fuck you. Fuck you, Darrell Y. Hamamoto and your cynicism. Fuck you and your supposed insights into Asian-American female psyche. Fuck you and your assumptions about my racial self-hatred. Fuck you for putting my love in quotation marks. Fuck you for implying that the love I feel for my boyfriend is "historically constructed" because I hate my Asian-ness so much and wish to marry above my status. Fuck you for assuming that he is only with me because of the admitted exoticization of Asian women in the media, when in reality he's so clueless about pop culture that he didn't even know it was the "popular" thing to do until I mentioned it to him. Fuck you and your close-minded, segregationist attitude that's contradictory at that. Earlier in this book, you were decrying the anti-miscegenation laws that prevented such interracial relationships from taking place, and now you are criticizing Asian women who choose to take advantage of it?

Fuck you. I am so glad I only borrowed this book from the library rather than buying it off Amazon!

~The Original Fong~
**You wish you could pull off being me**

1. Darrell Y. Hamamoto, Monitored Peril: Asian Americans and the Politics of TV Representation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1994), 171-172.

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