Charlie Chan Is Dead 2

by Jessica Hagedorn

  Published in hardback in 1974 and in paperback in 1975, the first Aiiieeeee! anthology, edited by Jeffery Paul Chan, Frank Chin, Lawson Inada, and Shawn Wong, introduced the concept of Asian American writers to the world. There were only fourteen writers included in the anthology, but the energy and debate sparked by the editors’ introductory essay, plus the provocative sampling of poems, plays, and stories by Carlos Bulosan, Louis Chu, John Okada, Oscar Peñaranda, Momoko Iko, and others was an absolute breakthrough as far as American writing was concerned. Much of my education as a writer, as I acknowledged in my original introduction, owes a big debt to this first Aiiieeeee!

  In 1993, the timing seemed right for an Asian American fiction anthology of as hefty size and ambition as Charlie Chan Is Dead. There were forty-eight writers in that initial collection. An amazing range of age, literary styles, and backgrounds was represented in the stories and novel excerpts of such diverse authors as Meena Alexander, Peter Bacho, Jeffery Paul Chan, Fiona Cheong, Marilyn Chin, Kiana Davenport, Gish Jen, Cynthia Kadohata, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa, Alex Kuo, Russell Leong, Walter Lew, David Wong Louie, Darrell Lum, Laureen Mar, Ruthanne Lum McCunn, Bharati Mukherjee, David Mura, Fae Myenne Ng, Sigrid Nuñez, Amy Tan, Sylvia Watanabe, Shawn Wong, Yoji Yamaguchi, and John Yau.

  Another strong reason to do the original anthology was the opportunity to feature work by young, wildly gifted, and daring writers who were largely unknown to a mass market readership. Lawrence Chua, the late Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Kimiko Hahn, Cherylene Lee, Walter Lew, Jocelyn Lieu, R. Zamora Linmark, Ruxana Meer, Han Ong, John Song, Kerri Sakamoto, and Lois-Ann Yamanaka were being published in a major collection for the first time. The first edition of Charlie Chan Is Dead also celebrated many of the pioneer writers who had paved the way for my generation: Diana Chang, Carlos Bulosan, N.V.M. Gonzalez, Wakako Yamauchi, Hisaye Yamamoto, Bienvenido Santos, José Garcia Villa, and Toshio Mori.

  Has anything changed or developed since the publication of the first edition? One thing is for sure—there are many more Asian American writers than ever before. It is exciting to look over the revised “Personal Bibliography” that I have assembled for this edition and note how many fine novels and collections of stories have been published since 1993. Some writers, like me, are first-generation Asian Americans, emigrating from places like China, Korea, Australia, Laos, Cambodia, India, or Pakistan, for example. Others were born on American soil, or are third-, fourth-, and fifth-generation Asian Americans. Obviously, the notion of “What is/What makes Asian American literature?” keeps expanding and evolving. South Asian, Korean, Filipino, and Vietnamese American writers have come into bloom in 2003 and are some of the strongest voices writing in the English language. As I write this, Bamboo Among the Oaks, an anthology of contemporary Hmong writing in English, edited by Mai Neng Moua, has just been published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press. It is, however, important to remember that the making of books isn’t only about spotting trends or discovering the “next big ethnic thing,” but also about digging deep into our past, unearthing long-forgotten treasures, recontextualizing and recognizing those who came before us and broke new ground. The Anchored Angel, a collection of the late José Garcia Villa’s selected writings (including essays on his work by other writers and critics), happily falls into this category. Thanks to the efforts of editor Eileen Tabios and the ever-innovative Kaya Press, Villa’s poems and stories have found a new audience since the inclusion of his minimalist fiction in the original Charlie Chan Is Dead.

  Subtitled At Home in the World, Charlie Chan Is Dead 2 once again brings together an array of fresh, vibrant, dissonant voices, alongside several writers from the first edition. Some—like Carlos Bulosan, Hisaye Yamamoto, Han Ong, Bharati Mukherjee, David Wong Louie, and Lois-Ann Yamanaka—are represented by different stories. Bold, confident, imaginative, and courageous, the forty-two writers in this anthology take us on a wild and unpredictable journey—from a humble village in the Philippine countryside to a discreet boutique in Hong Kong specializing in sinister sexual toys; from a posh celebrity estate in the Hollywood Hills to a cozy love nest in Boston; from a fashionable home in the Left Bank of Paris to a hovel in Saigon. We meet characters who are flawed, compelling, haunting, and unforgettable. They run the gamut—from the scrappy poor who live by their wits to the privileged, melancholy exiles who wander from city to city, consumed by loss and longing.

  In Meera Nair’s “Video,” we encounter a feisty Muslim wife who decides she’s had enough of her husband’s shenanigans and stages an unorthodox rebellion. In Don Lee’s “Voir Dire,” we meet an ambivalent Korean American lawyer who’s been assigned to defend a young, vicious, remorseless killer. In Eric Gamalinda’s “Formerly Known as Bionic Boy,” we meet an extraordinary exile from the Marcos-era Philippines, who is both blessed and cursed by his psychic powers. In Ka Vang’s “Ms. Pac-Man Ruined My Gang Life,” a tough Hmong teenager in Saint Paul, Minnesota, attempts to flee the dead-end violence of her troubled life. In Christian Langworthy’s “Mango,” we meet the sweet, mixed-race children of a prostitute in war-torn Vietnam, who have learned to take nothing for granted. In Monique Truong’s “Live-in Cook,” we meet Binh, a reserved young Vietnamese man, who is hired to cook for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. In “Separation Anxiety,” the gritty excerpt from Brian Ascalon Roley’s novel American Son, we encounter two conflicted half-white, half-Filipino brothers. Tomas, the older brother, breeds attacks dogs and pretends to be a Mexican gangster. Gabe, the narrator and younger brother, is a gentle dreamer, yet also despises his Filipino half.

  In “Mister Porma,” R. Zamora Linmark has come up with another sly, witty story set in Hawaii—this time about a male beauty contest. Darrell Lum’s hilarious “Fourscore and Seven Years Ago,” written in pidgin English, is back. So is Bienvenido Santos’s classic “Immigration Blues,” which moves us with its unsparing yet tender characterizations of old-time Filipino bachelors seeking love in America. So is Shawn Wong’s “Eye Contact,” with its pair of sexy, knowing, almost-too-hip-for-their-own-good lovers, and Peter Bacho’s revised version of “Rico.” Marilyn Chin’s angry, defiant voice in “Moon” is now paired with her new, just-as-sassy and ironic “Parable of the Cake.” “The Brown House,” by Hisaye Yamamoto, gives us a wry look at marriage, and what it means to be black and Asian in America. Bharati Mukherjee’s “The Management of Grief” is an eerily prescient classic about the tragic aftermath of a terrorist bombing. Race and sex are examined in profound and unexpected ways as well, in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Sexy,” Christina Chiu’s “Doctor,” and Peter Ho Davies’s unsettling “The Hull Case.” Karl Taro Greenfeld’s “Submission” is an unflinching portrait of an ambitious, cunning young dominatrix in contemporary Hong Kong.

  Despite, or because of, these fearful, post-9/11 days of economic uncertainty and political turmoil, the making of art and literature seems more precious and urgent than ever. Arts organizations, alternative presses, and literary collectives, such as Bamboo Ridge in Hawaii, Kaya Press and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in New York City, the Asian American Renaissance in Minneapolis, the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA, and the Keamy Street Workshop in San Francisco, are more vital than ever. Young Asian American writers flourish and grow in such supportive settings, and I have found that the impressive publications that come out of many of these cultural centers—collections of poetry, fiction, plays, oral history, and cultural studies—are great resources for anyone who cares about the past, present, and future of American literature.

  As I write this introduction, suicide bombings have taken their grim and grisly toll in Bali, Baghdad, Jerusalem, Jakarta, Cotabato, and Bombay. Acts of terrorism and unspeakable violence have become routine. We’re in a global, blood-drenched funk, cynical and despairing of the future. The sense of anxiety and blah in the air is almost palpable. Many of us go about our day-to-day tasks with a nagging, low-grade fever aching in our bones. We ask ourselves the usual obvious, unanswera
ble questions. What does all this frenzied carnage and destruction mean for our children and our children’s children? But we go on. There are some things I cling to, some things I still believe. We write out of personal and often terrifying truths. For many of us, what is personal is also political, and vice versa. We continue to assert and explore who we are as Asians, Asian Americans, and citizens of the world. Yes, we read and we write as acts of resistance and rebellion, as Vargas Llosa says. But we also read and write to remember and to dream. We read and we write to arouse the senses. To lose ourselves, to escape. To walk in someone else’s shoes. To empathize and understand. We write to reflect the beauty, cruelty, harmony, and chaos of the universe; we write to inflict the pain and shock and delight of recognition. We write to elicit sympathy, fear, or maybe both.

  There are those of us who write simply because we must. All those voices singing, all those lovely ghosts dancing in our heads. The urge to create is essential, the same as the urge to live. Here, then, are the stories.

  Jessica Hagedorn

  August 27, 2003

  New York City

  CUNANAN’S WAKE

  Gina Apostol

  If it weren’t for Budoy’s wife Swanie, our kapitana, we would never have reached our pinnacle of achievement (as they say in the high school autograph books). We elected Swanie mayor because she made the best lechon in the village. She had perfected the art of basting a pig and transformed her talent into a cottage industry through government prizes and loans from the Women’s Small Business Cooperative. She had a thief’s cunning and a grandmother’s tenacity—no one could outwit, outprofit, or outcook Kapitana Swanie. Her house soon became a meat packaging and distribution plant; her self-rotating Swanie Roaster™, patent number 87609-A, was exported to American cities, places like San Diego or Daly City.

  In personal matters, however, Kapitana Swanie was not so lucky. For starters, she was married to Budoy. No offense, but though he was the strongest man in town, he wasn’t the sharpest. He was a dreamer. The only profit he had to show for himself was the rise of his belly, a predictable account. He had given her one child and that was it: Joey.

  Everyone knew about Joey but nobody talked about him. Once in a while, somebody would return from the city with some new snatch ofGINA APOSTOL was born in Manila, Philippines, in 1963. Her first novel, Bibliolepsy, won the Philippine National Book Award for Fiction in 1998. She has just completed her second novel, The Gun Dealer’s Daughter. Her stories have appeared in various anthologies and journals, including Flippin’: Filipino Writing on America; Babaylan: An Anthology of Filipina and Filipina-American Writing; and Bold Words: A Century of Asian American Writing. She lives in Dobbs Ferry, New York, with her daughter, Nastasia.

  gossip, and small talk would follow. But we pitied Kapitana Swanie—and, to be honest, we feared Budoy, who used to be a bodyguard for Chinese gamblers. Nobody talked about Joey.

  Benedicto Amolar, the college boy, came up from the city and accosted us with the news. He slapped Budoy’s drinking arm with a newspaper, spilling his basi. “Hey—isn’t this guy your cousin?”

  “Careful, boy,” Budoy warned. He whistled for Taranta and she emerged from behind the puka-shell curtain that separated her world from ours, dirt kitchen from dirt restaurant. Taranta was heavy with her fourth child, and her husband, the doctor, was fooling around with his fourth nurse-intern. Every time he had an affair, Taranta got pregnant, which made it easier for us to keep track of his indiscretions.

  Benedicto jabbed at the headline: VERSACE MURDERED! “Look, it says the killer’s from our province. Cunanan. Isn’t your mother a Cunanan?”

  “Maybe I didn’t go off to some fancy school in Manila, but I can still read,” Budoy grumbled. “And yeah, I read that. So what, Pig? Why don’t you shut up and have a Coca? It’s on me.”

  Benedicto was a skeletal yet handsome lad, with a haunted, tuberculous look. We called him Pig, for short.

  Pig eased himself onto the bench.

  Taranta came with a new pitcher of basi and a glass of Coke. She waddled over, oily as an emperor penguin. I watched the way her blouse stuck to her, a sheet of cellophane kissing the moon. I love every woman I see, even the ugly ones. I’m a connoisseur of humanity, its lumps and marks and tics. A woman bearing the burden of the world always has that potent look of sex and tragedy, desire and trauma, dread in love. Taranta’s figure inspired my adolescent empathy, which began in the loins but flowered in the heart, or the liver—whichever was the seat of this greasy compassion. Her breasts jiggled as she sighed. And then she cleaned up the mess and clattered away, reeking of sizzling pusit and charcoal.

  It was 7:30 in the evening, and we, too, had begun to stink, our moist flab giving off a humid excretion, a dipsomaniac spume. We were Taranta’s favorite customers, early to drink and late to surrender, indulgence trapped in our flesh like banked smoke. We looked like drunks, we smelled like drunks, and we knew that one day we would die like drunks: soggy-headed, fetid, and unmourned. But none of that concerned us, at least not right then. Our wives and girlfriends were in their places, playing mayor or mayordoma, building up their self-esteem at our expense. But like I said, I love women, especially for their contribution to our longevity. How could the human race survive without their long-suffering, almost miraculous ability to revive and spawn, fuck and fornicate with, let’s face it, beasts like us?

  “So what?” Budoy said, examining Benedicto’s newspaper. “Who cares? Everyone is crazy in America. All the killers who come from there—remember that one who made pickles out of fingers?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Dahmer. Preserved their heads, too.”

  “And they killed John Lennon,” Dadong added, bitterly. “Americans killed John Lennon.”

  I nodded. “In New York, they have a big park for him with strawberries.”

  Budoy spat out his betel nut and poured himself more basi.

  “But this one’s a Cunanan,” Pig said. “He’s your cousin. My aunt Toria said so.”

  “She does know your family,” I said. “Ever since your uncle turned her down in ’52, she’s been taking notes.”

  Pig snatched the paper back from Budoy. “There’s a bounty on his head.”

  We huddled around him. “You’re right: FBI’s Most Wanted. Ha! Takes a Filipino to escape the FBI—that’s a Pinoy for you!”

  Dadong lifted his glass. “Yan ang Pinoy!”

  We shouted, clinked glasses. “Mabuhay! Long live Cunanan!”

  “Even if he is a queer,” Pig noted.

  Budoy didn’t share in our revelry. “So what?” he said. “So what if my mother’s uncle’s son lived in San Diego, America, and had a homosexual son who broke his heart? It must have broken his heart—sending that kid to an expensive Catholic school just so he could turn out bakla.”

  We talked it over, and in the end, we decided Budoy was right. Cunanan was the champion of TNT, tago ng tago, hiding for your life—the Filipino way of life in America—and for that, he deserved our respect. But beyond that, he was an American killer, and an American problem. America had brought him up.

  Still, we sought him out in the papers again the next day. No one knew if he had ever even been to the Philippines, but the dailies liked the story. The fashion killer. They put his charming, fat-cheeked face on the cover every day, if only to announce that he was still on the lam—disappeared, somewhere, in the wilds of Florida or Illinois.

  “Ha!” said Dadong. “They’ll never get him.”

  We raised our glasses again. “Mabuhay! Long live Cunanan!”

  The longer Cunanan remained free, the more sympathy I felt for him. Not for his Filipino name or troubled looks or his connection to our brooding friend Budoy or even the common cause we made with him in drink. It was the story of a hunted man, alone with himself. A man in the dark. It doesn’t take much to move me, a lapsed Catholic, after all. I’ve kept the tenderness and lost the moral steel. My heart is a sissy. I didn’t care about the killings or anythin
g else that had come before his long, sunswept flight through Miami’s summer. I rooted for him, I suppose, the way we all did, all of us drunks who knew too much about our own stupid lives.

  Junior, the barangay captain, disagreed. “No tolerance, no pity. If I were in the FBI, I would just gun him down dead. That’s what I’d do if I saw him.”

  Dadong shook his head. “Just gun him down dead? Your own coun tryman—your own cousin?”

  “All the more reason. Disgrace to the Philippines. Shame on his country.”

  “Yeah, you’d shoot him with your cheap, second-hand Tokarev. Thing takes five rounds just to kill a rat,” said Dadong. He was a reckless kid, just out of school, and he already had a belly.

  Junior took out his precious gun, the gift his father had given him when he won the barangay elections despite not having finished elementary school. He pointed the barrel at Dadong, who froze. You could see that young Dadong’s mind had partially scampered away—what was left of it, anyway, after all the booze.

  Everyone got quiet. I imagined the headline. “Two Killed over Cunanan. Dateline: San D___.” That was how our little town would have gone down in history. Then Budoy said, “Come on now, put it down, Junior,” and Junior did.

  A few days later, Kapitana came to see us in the middle of the afternoon, agitated, as we sat sweating through our undershirts. We tried to be polite.