{"id":9320,"date":"2010-10-03T02:27:46","date_gmt":"2010-10-03T02:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=9320"},"modified":"2022-03-24T18:03:43","modified_gmt":"2022-03-24T18:03:43","slug":"the-night-my-mother-met-bruce-lee-observations-on-not-fitting-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=9320","title":{"rendered":"The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee: Observations on Not Fitting In"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/140298\/the-night-my-mother-met-bruce-lee-by-paisley-rekdal\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee: Observations on Not Fitting In<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Vintage an Imprint of Penguin Random House<br \/>\n2000<br \/>\n224 pages<br \/>\nPaperback ISBN: 978-0-375-70855-8 (0-375-70855-3)<br \/>\nE-Book ISBN: 978-0-307-42908-7 (0-307-42908-3)<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.paisleyrekdal.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Paisley Rekdal<\/a><\/strong>, Distinguished Professor of English and Asian Studies<br \/>\n<em>University of Utah<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/140298\/the-night-my-mother-met-bruce-lee-by-paisley-rekdal\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.randomhouse.com\/cover\/9780375708558?height=450&amp;.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When you come from a mixed race background as Paisley Rekdal does \u2014 her mother is Chinese American and her father is Norwegian\u2013 thorny issues of identity politics, and interracial desire are never far from the surface. Here in this hypnotic blend of personal essay and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Travel_literature\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">travelogue<\/a>, Rekdal journeys throughout <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Asia\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Asia<\/a> to explore her place in a world where one\u2019s \u201cappearance is the deciding factor of one\u2019s ethnicity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In her soul-searching voyage, she teaches English in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/South_Korea\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">South Korea<\/a> where her native colleagues call her a \u201chermaphrodite,\u201d and is dismissed by her host family in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Japan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Japan<\/a> as an American despite her assertion of being half-Chinese. A visit to Taipei with her mother, who doesn\u2019t know the dialect, leads to the bitter realization that they are only tourists, which makes her further question her identity. Written with remarkable insight and clarity, Rekdal a poet whose fierce lyricism is apparent on every page, demonstrates that the shifting frames of identity can be as tricky as they are exhilarating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When you come from a mixed race background as Paisley Rekdal does \u2014 her mother is Chinese American and her father is Norwegian\u2013 thorny issues of identity politics, and interracial desire are never far from the surface. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,395,1245,11,125,8,17,25],"tags":[3075,25857,2132],"class_list":["post-9320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia","category-autobiography","category-biography","category-books","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-monographs","category-women","tag-paisley-rekdal","tag-penguin-random-house","tag-vintage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9320"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63539,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9320\/revisions\/63539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}