AILSA CHANG, HOST:
I grew up in Silicon Valley in the '80s and '90s. There were already a ton of Asians in the area. There are even more these days. And I didn't process until years later how special growing up like that is in America - when you're not white, but you're surrounded by people who look like you. So you can sort of insulate yourself from feelings of exclusion because you don't feel all that different day to day. Our next guest grew up in an area with an even higher concentration of Asians - San Gabriel Valley, right outside LA. It's a place that forms the starting point for her new book called "Unassimilable." It argues the case against assimilation for the Asian diaspora and reimagines where to find community in this country. Bianca Mabute-Louie joins us now. Welcome.
BIANCA MABUTE-LOUIE: Thank you. I'm so glad to be here.
CHANG: We're so glad to have you. So you describe San Gabriel Valley as a place, quote, "where Asian immigrants go to never assimilate." What do you mean by that? - because, I mean, for people who've never been to SGV, what does it feel like to live there?
MABUTE-LOUIE: Yeah, what I mean by that is, if you are a Chinese immigrant, you can navigate San Gabriel Valley without ever really learning English, continuing to have access to the foods you're comfortable with, finding people from your own community to work with and build community with. And so I start the book with the ethnoburb and specifically a story of my popo, my grandma, on my maternal side who experienced just that. She immigrated later in her life in her 70s, and because of the ethnoburb, she was able to have this vibrant third act without needing to learn a new language or assimilate or acclimate to a new country.
CHANG: Right. I mean, you know, she could stay in her Cantonese bubble. She never learned English. What did you make of that as a child, like, watching her curate her own world like that?
MABUTE-LOUIE: Oh, as a child, I was horrified because...
(LAUGHTER)
MABUTE-LOUIE: ...Here I am, right? I am second generation, a child of immigrants. I lived in the ethnoburb, where I was surrounded by people like me. But still, as a child of immigrants, you feel - at least in the '90s, you feel the compulsory normativity of whiteness. I still, you know, only saw white people on TV, where I went to school was a predominantly white area. And so my popo refusing to assimilate really threatened my compulsion to try to blend in and belong.
CHANG: But I want to make sure I understand the case that you lay out in this book for not assimilating. You write that, quote, "unassimability (ph) is a proposition to refuse to belong here altogether together. Unassimability frees us to define ourselves, our belonging and our power independent of whiteness." So my question for you is, what does not assimilating look like day to day because we can't all live in San Gabriel Valley, like your popo?
MABUTE-LOUIE: Yeah, I think a big part of the argument I make in "Unassimilable" is to orient ourselves away from trying to prove ourselves to whiteness and to this country and to orient ourselves towards community.
CHANG: Yeah, but I guess I want to understand what does orienting ourselves towards each other mean? Like, who is the each other? Like, my lingering thought, Bianca, is I still do want to belong here in America. And to me, belonging in America is not only shaped by whiteness, but it's also shaped by colliding and mixing with all the cultures that make America, not just white cultures. And I have trouble picturing being both Asian and American outside of that collision and mixing, you know?
MABUTE-LOUIE: Yeah, I think - the book isn't an argument to be isolationist, right? But I think, you know, what it means and how we can apply it more broadly to society and to our lives, no matter where we live, is thinking about how to build community outside of the institutions and norms that the state kind of defines for us. And so one example of how I'm trying to pursue that in my current stage of life - I'm not in an ethnoburb. I'm actually in the South. And so what that has looked like for me is joining political community, joining mutual aid organizations with people who are most impacted. And I'm not really thinking about if they're Asian or not Asian. I'm just thinking about who's impacted when the hurricane comes. Who am I going to call? I always make the joke - who's going to be on my compound when the apocalypse comes because that's who I'm building community with, and that's what it means for me to be unassimilable.
CHANG: When I think about creating community, though, and claiming my heritage - I mean, when I was reading your book, I did wonder to myself, man, like, am I not angry enough as an Asian American? Like, should claiming my heritage, claiming community be more adversarial to whiteness?
MABUTE-LOUIE: In the book, I do position it as adversarial to whiteness because...
CHANG: You do.
MABUTE-LOUIE: Yeah - because I see how often we try to claim community and belonging in alignment with whiteness. I think about the spike in anti-Asian hate crimes as a result of COVID-19, how so many folks were trying to, you know, argue that we are from here, and so we don't deserve to be treated like this. But it just made me think, like, no one deserves to be treated like this. And actually, it shines a light on how this country treats people and that we are not immune because we've been stereotyped as the model minority. And so I think that's why I take, you know, what you call an adversarial approach because it was around that time when I thought, I don't want to belong here. I don't want to build belonging around what this country claims to be because I think this country is lying to me, right? This is, you know, a country built on genocide and enslavement. Is this really something I want to belong to, and if no, what and who do I want to belong to?
CHANG: I know that you wrote much of this book while pregnant, and very fittingly, your son has two beautiful names that reflect so much of what is in this book - a Chinese name and a Filipino name. Can you tell us both of those names and what they mean?
MABUTE-LOUIE: Yeah. His Filipino name is Kapwa, which means you are my other me, or it points to our interconnectedness. And his Chinese name is Ga-Yin, which my mom gave him that name, and it means to take an expansive view of family. But it also has a double meaning, which is to kind of embody this indominable spirit.
CHANG: Who do you hope your son will eventually find family and belonging with someday?
MABUTE-LOUIE: I hope he finds family and belonging with the masses of people that are oppressed by our structures. I think going through writing this book was kind of, in some ways, the end of identity politics for me, even though it is a book about the Asian diaspora. So I realize that's kind of ironic.
CHANG: (Laughter).
MABUTE-LOUIE: But, you know, by the end of writing this book, I was like, this politic of unassimilability leads me to this place of feeling an urgent and necessary solidarity with all people all over the world who are oppressed by these structures of white supremacy and violence and settler colonialism. And so I hope that, you know, my child would feel also that urgent solidarity that not only moves him to action but connects him to the hope of communities actually taking action and pushing back against oppression.
CHANG: Bianca Mabute-Louie's new book is called "Unassimilable: An Asian Diasporic Manifesto For The 21st Century." Thank you very much, Bianca.
MABUTE-LOUIE: Thank you so much, Ailsa. I really enjoyed this chat with you.
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