The interview ran on the March 9, 2013, broadcast of Only a Game.

Life of Pi

Shilpa Davé, author of the forthcoming University of Illinois Press book Indian Accents: Brown Voice and Racial Performance in American Television and Film, writes about the “South Asian Invasion” of this year’s Academy Awards.

In an article for the South Asian American Digital Archive blog, Davé writes that Life of Pi wasn’t the only film recognized by the Academy in which Indian accents were thriving.

(Photo: Loren Javier, Flickr Creative Commons)

Q: In March 2013 the Press will publish Shilpa Davé’s book Indian Accents: Brown Voice and Racial Performance in American Television and Film.  It will be the first book that you acquired for the series to be released.  How did you discover this manuscript?

Vijay: I discovered Indian Accents with the help of our then senior editor Kendra Boileau (now Editor-in-Chief at Penn State University Press). We collaborated with our new series’ editor Jigna Desai, who knew the author and thus sought out the project. I believe this first book in the series will turn out as a breakthrough in media and ethnic studies!

Q: What is different about Davé’s approach?

Vijay: Davé introduces the new concept of “brown voice,” as analogous to blackface, to describe racial impersonations of accents in mainstream film and television. Apu from The Simpsons seems a prime example, since the immigrant character’s voice is performed by a non-South Asian. Beyond racialization based on visual appearance, Davé suggests the profound implications of voice on ethnicity, national identity, and belonging in America.

Q: Are we at a time when Asian American voices are staking out a new place in American culture?

Vijay: To some extent, I believe so. Amid the increasing diversity of the United States, Asian Americans are asserting their voices. For instance, Mindy Kaling has begun her own t.v. show, the very first for a South Asian actor. So Asian Americans are beginning to represent themselves in American culture at large.

Q: Following Indian Accents in April 2013 are Yellow Power, Yellow Soul: The Radical Art of Fred Ho and Fighting from a Distance: How Filipino Exiles Helped Topple a Dictator.  How do these three books together signal a new direction for the series?

Vijay: The series aspires to publish cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research in Asian-American studies. Drawing upon the board’s knowledge of anthropology, sociology, and gender studies, the new concept takes a keen interest in cultural expression, cultural studies, and cultural performance. For instance, Yellow Power, Yellow Soul, an intimate appreciation of Chinese-American saxophonist Fred Ho, amplifies his bodacious combination of art and politics.

Q: What are some of the barriers that Fred Ho crosses with his work? 

Vijay: Fred Ho stands out as the first artist to combine Chinese opera and African-American music, creativity that simply amazes me! How does someone even think of such a rare combination? As an activist, Ho fuses many of his compositions with melodies from Asian and African music, bringing these various peoples together.

Q: Does the interdisciplinary direction take the series in unexpected places?

Vijay: In some respects, it does, crossing over into television, film, music, art, and activism. I also take an interest in Asian Americans in the Midwest, a little unexplored region in the field.

Q: How do you collaborate with the series’ editorial board to attract, evaluate, and acquire new books?

Vijay: As with Indian Accents, sometimes the series’ editors bring projects to my attention. Otherwise, I meet authors at conferences or receive proposals through the post, such as Fighting from a Distance, a first-hand account of Filipino-American resistance to Marcos’ dictatorship. In these cases, I consult the expertise of the series’ board in Asian-American studies. I really enjoy collaborating with such dynamic movers and shakers in their field!

Q: So Fighting from a Distance came unsolicited?  Is that rare?

Vijay: Yes, it came in through the post unsolicited, which happens now and then with books. I just became so captivated with the dramatic account of a bunch of Filipino
immigrants who land in the United States and then discover that their homeland is on fire! An activist in the opposition himself, the author Jose Fuentecilla gives us a ringside seat to the overseas arm of the resistance that helped overthrow a dictator half way around the world.

Q:  What are the next books coming in the series?

Vijay: In the autumn, we are publishing a groundbreaking collection on Asian Americans in the South, opening up another region outside of the usual Atlantic and Pacific coasts. In addition, we are bringing forth Undercover Asian, LeiLani Nishime’s perceptive study of multiracial Asian Americans in visual culture, which interprets certain images of Keanu Reeves and Kimora Lee Simmons. Both autumnal books will really build upon the debuts in the spring.

A second-generation Indian American, she has studied the role of South Asians in American pop culture extensively, and is writing a book on the subject. Speaking about growing up in Madison, Wisconsin, in the 1970s, she recalls, “We’d get really excited when we’d see an Indian face on television. I remember Babu from Seinfeld, and there was one guy on Hill Street Blues.” . . . She notes that producers and directors are perpetually in search of nonthreatening novelty, and contends Indians fill this role particularly well in the post-9/11 world.

Women, Gender, and Families of Color is edited by Jennifer Hamer of the University of Kansas.

The inaugural issue, due out in early 2013, is a collection of articles that explore various elements of Black senior women’s sexuality, including body image; sexual and reproductive health; and the politics of race, class, gender, age, and sexual orientation on Black sexuality. It is guest-edited by Bette Dickerson, Associate Professor of Sociology at American University and past president of the Association of Black Sociologists, and Nicole Rousseau, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Kent State University and award-winning author of Black Woman’s Burden; Commodifying Black Reproduction (Palgrave Macmillan)

Visit the journal page for information about submitting and/or subscribing.

Read the full press release.

Q:  How did you come to focus on Larry and Guyo Tajiri?

Robinson:  When I first started studying Japanese Americans, in the course of research on my first book, By Order of the President, I read through the Japanese American Citizens (JACL) League newspaper Pacific Citizen. I became intrigued by the incisive articles and editorials writen by its wartime editor, Larry Tajiri, and I looked for any information I could find on this mysterious figure. I was surprised to learn that his widow, Guyo Tajiri, was still alive. I boldly wrote to her and asked for an interview. She agreed to meet me, and as we talked, I realized that she too had been a vital player in the production of the Pacific Citizen. I soon got to know Guyo, and we became friends. She warmly encouraged me to study Larry’s career and writings, though she was exceedingly modest about her own. It was Larry’s brother, the celebrated sculptor Shinkichi Tajiri, who invited me on behalf of the Tajiri family to edit a collection of Larry Tajiri’s work, a project to which Guyo gave her immediate blessing. When she died soon afterwards, it became obvious to me that her contributions to Larry Tajiri’s work had to be studied as well.

Q:  How did they become leading figures in Nisei political life?

Robinson:  Larry Tajiri began working as an editor for the Japanese American press in 1931, at age 17, and within a few years had risen to the post of chief columnist and English-language editor of the San Francisco Nichi Bei, the top community newspaper. In this position, he became a trusted source of information and a real arbiter of taste for the young Nisei. He was also the main organizer of the liberal Nisei “Young Democrat” clubs that formed in the Bay Area. Guyo also was a respected writer and journalist during these years. Once World War II broke out and Japanese Americans were being removed form the West Coast, Larry and Guyo agreed to move to Salt Lake City and together transform the JACL’s little newsletter, the Pacific Citizen, into a fulll-fledged newspaper. As virtually the only sources of outside information for Japanese Americans, they were the leading figures in Nisei political life.

Q:  Were they held in the internment camps? Did they have family there?

Robinson:  Larry and Guyo Tajiri moved to Salt Lake City, outside of the West Coast excluded zone, just before the deadline for such ”voluntary evaucation.”  As a result, they were able to avoid behing held in the government camps. However, the families of both spouses were confined in camps, Larry’s in Arizona and Guyo’s in Wyoming.

Q:  What problems did the Tajiris run into when publishing Pacific Citizen?

Robinson:  As publishers of the Pacific Citizen, the Tajiris faced a daunting set of challenges. Money was extremely scarce. Ninety percent of their client population, the JACL’s prewar supporters, were in official custody. The JACL had further made itself odious to many Nisei by its reluctant decision not to officially opose mass removal. Further, there were forces, both on the West Coast and in Washington, who found it politically attractive to attack both Japanese Americans as disloyal and to propose military custody of all Nisei. Larry Tajiri himself travelled to Washington in order to testify before the Dies Committee (House Un-American Activities Committee) regarding charges of ”coddling” of disloyal inmates.

Q:  What were some of their most prominent pieces?

Robinson:  In addition to writing columns and editorials for the Pacific Citizen, Larry Tajiri wrote in outside journals such as The New Leader, Asia and the Americas, plus a set of columns that he did for the multiracial journal NOW. Probably his signature piece was the article ”Farewell to Little Tokyo” he wrote for the pluralist quarterly Common Ground, which dealt with life for Japanese Americans after camp. Guyo did less outside publishing. During the war, her chief contribution was the women’s column she wrote for Pacific Citizen  under the name ”Ann Nisei.” Her most notable set of writings was undoubtedly her coverage for the Pacific Citizen during 1949 of the trial of Iva Toguri d’Aquino, a Nisei charged with treason as ”Tokyo Rose.”

Q:  What was the circulation of this publication?

Robinson:  Precise circulation figures are hard to come by, especially since copies of the newspaper were handed around among camp inmates, but the best estimate would be something on the order of 10,000 during the war.

Q:  How did their roles in journalism change after the war?

Robinson:  After Japanese Americans were released from camp, and began starting new locally-based journals or reviving old ones, the Tajiris’ quasimonopoly over the ethnic Japanese press ended. In order both to find a market and to stay relevant, they concentrated on national news, especially questions of civil rights, and hisred correspondents from diverse cities to report on the news there. They also expanded their coverage of sports and entertainment news.