Resisting Silence through Music: Asian Diaspora & Queer Identities
“I had supposed that I was practicing passive resistance to stereotyping, but it was so passive no one noticed I was resisting. To finally recognize our own invisibility is to finally be on the path toward visibility. Invisibility is not a natural state for anyone” (Mitsuye Yamada, 1979). In Invisibility is an Unnatural Disaster: Reflections of an Asian American Woman, Mitsuye Yamada urges Asian American women to strive toward visibility and resist the pressure to remain silent about their lived experiences. We wish to explore how Asian immigrants have navigated their multicultural and queer identities through music. In the United States and other Western countries, musicians with Asian ethnicities and heritage are often “othered,” with the label of “perpetual foreigner” imposed on their image, even if they have lived in the United States their entire lives. Here are some examples of musicians in the Asian diaspora who use their voices and music to affirm their Asian and queer identities, however they wish to define it.
Ruby Ibarra is a Filipina-American rapper who immigrated with her family from Tacloban City, Philippines to San Lorenzo, California. Living in the Bay area where hip-hop was a formative element of her childhood and adolescent years, Ibarra raps in Tagalog (Filipino language) and English. Through music she speaks about growing up with the colonial mentality of whitewashing, growing up as an immigrant family assimilating to US culture, and reclaiming pride as a filipina. She has said that she does not attempt to represent or define the immigrant experience for every individual, but that “[she] hopes people find moments in these songs where they feel represented.” As a non-black POC whose music largely focuses on the genre of rap music, there is definitely room to argue the nuances of using black culture for her music. It seems like Ibarra has taken steps to address this issue—on her social media platforms like instagram, she often gives tribute/credit to the black community: “I recognize my privileges as a non-black POC, and the beautiful culture and genre of music I’ve been able to participate in that was created by the black community.” (instagram post from February 1, 2018). She also takes action as an ally to use her platform in speaking out against police brutality: “Police (and media) typically justify the shootings by saying they were armed-- does being black cancel the right to bear arms? ...We need a system that doesn’t target a group of people. We need a system that doesn’t kill a group of people...The long history of system racism has led to mistrust and fear of law enforcement.” (instagram post from September 21, 2016).
Listen to her album Circa91. I recommend “Brown Out,” “Someday,” and “Us.”
Rina Sawayama is a Japanese-British R&B pop musician. She was born in Niigata, Japan and immigrated to London, England with her family when she was 5 years old. In a 2018 Broadly interview, Zing Tsjeng describes Sawayama’s character as a “tangerine-haired, cyberpunk-influenced musician slash model.” A central theme that Sawayama explores in her music is romance and alienation in the internet-obsessed society that we live in.
In “Cherry,” Sawayama takes the opportunity to publicly vocalize her pansexual identity. She describes the song as her most personal but political song, and has contemplated past moments of shame around her queerness. For Sawayama, “Cherry” is a love letter of affirmation for bi and pan people who don’t feel authentically queer when they’re heterosexual relationships <3 <3 <3
During her studies at Cambridge in England, Sawayama felt alienated, different, and undesirable in an environment where over 60 percent of its student population is white and British. Later in life, Sawayama has found communities and families as she has continued her journey as a musician. She has spoken about the many emerging queer Asian artists active in many different genres: “We’re so protective of our space, even who we decide to sign to, who we decide to release through, or who we decide to work with. It’s really important to us. Because as queer Asians, there’s not that many of us and we really want to get it right.” To Sawayama, it’s important to her that she’s representing queer Asians, rather than just ‘Asian’. She wants to queer the world with pop music.
Michelle Zauner is a Korean American musician who takes the name Japanese Breakfast for her musical project that emerged as a way for Zauner to navigate her grief and memory of her mother’s terminal illness and death. Through music Zauner has found healing as well as a way to reckon with her Korean American identity. In the New Yorker essay “Crying in H Mart,” Zauner speaks about the identity crisis of losing her mother, who is her last connection to her Korean heritage.
Growing up in Eugene, Oregan, a predominately white town, Zauner hated being half Korean. She could barely speak the language and didn’t have any Asian friends. There was nothing about herself that felt Korean, except when it came to food. She has written an essay called “real Life: Love, Loss, and Kimchi” about the comforting power of food as a device of healing through her mother’s struggle with cancer.
On the moniker “Japanese Breakfast”, Zauner wanted a name that combined elements of something iconically American (breakfast) with something “American people just associate with something exotic or foreign” (Japanese). People often assume she’s Japanese, and Zauner says that she can tell who that real fans are—they know she’s Korean. She likes that the moniker exposes those who assume she’s Japanese.
Listen to her albums Psychopomp and Soft Sounds from Another Planet for trips of nostalgia and longing and contemplation on life and death and love and grief around identity and family <3 <3
Hayley Kiyoko is a Japanese-American singer, songwriter, actress and director who was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She has shown interest in music as early as 5 to 6 years of age when she got her first drum kit and wrote her first song. It was also around this age that she knew that she liked girls.
Since she was young, Kiyoko has combated the loneliness that comes with being a queer asian in society. She worked as an actress during her childhood, exposing her to discrimination due to her biracial physical appearance. Several rejections due to her appearance was enough to plant the seeds of doubt about whether she was enough. In addition, she kept her sexual orientation to herself in fear of being ostracized even further—only coming out to her parents in sixth grade. Unfortunately, her parents refused to acknowledge this confession, stating that it was just a phase.
She continued to keep her sexual orientation a secret which isolated her even further from her friends. She found it depressing to watch girls that I liked flirt with guys, so she stayed at home during her free time. Later on, she had her heart broken by her best friend which devastated her for a period of time. The constant rejection that Kiyoko had received until then prevented her from being comfortable with who she was, putting her in a state of perpetual fear.
In order to appeal to more of an audience, her songwriters wanted her to sing about topics that she personally connected to. As a result, she came out to her songwriters which inspired “Girls Like Girls,” a song that referenced her experience as a lesbian. Also, in putting out music videos that actually show the narrative that she sings about, she fights the heterosexual narrative that restricts the LGTBQ community in today’s society. Using her music as vehicle of representation, she unites a group of isolated individuals, earning her the nickname “Lesbian Jesus.”
By confronting her past fears and illustrating them in a form with which she loves and performs, she becomes the idol that she never had.
