Brandon:
The man with the giant head is Leone Sinigaglia,
a Jewish Italian who, at 75, died as the Nazis arrested him for
deportation to a slave labor camp. His picture does seem grim, but
almost too solemn for the occasion of the portrait. I'm not even sure I identify with his music but when I listened, it evoked something in me...something indescribable and entirely vague. Who can tell what
he was thinking at this moment? I think, however, that his dome only
because of the length of his face, itself being more narrow and
elongated than the average human. I can't even say he's tangential to
our discussion as, other interest of full disclosure, I had to look him
up on Wikipedia, the source of most of my current knowledge on my
Italian and Jewish heritage.
As for Missoula, perhaps
it was just serendipitous, an occasion for two histories to cross in a
most unlikely way. I'd like to think that it was preordained, that
yours and your grandfather's lives needed to meet there. Is it possible
that this intersection hastened you more fervently to Japan? Was there
ever fervor? I realize that your preference for lack of reason to open
opportunity is exactly what I'm attempting to reason out.
I'm
curious about the other story you mention about Ridgefield; however,
regarding the one you told, it is amazing how kids behave. Clearly, the
child who belittled you knew nothing of which he was speaking, yet
something within his own self urged him to act so malevolently. As
children, we're so impressionable, which, of course, is nothing new.
Now, a father myself, I keep a minute-to-minute monitor on the language
I use because I don't want her to ostracize people unlike her, whether
they're Japaguese or Portapanese, or even chasing a penny down on the
school's gym floor. I may have mentioned that in the past, when I was
ridiculed in middle school for acting like a Jew, when I swiped a penny
up from the ground. I feel somewhat indifferent to that now, similarly
to your feelings about your bus incident. But, I never forgot that
either.
As for self-hatred and its transference into
love of a history I don't fully know, we so often love what we hate and
vice versa. I can't say I love being either Italian or Jewish...I don't
fully identify with either and always identify with one or the other
when it's convenient. I became intrigued when my grandmother told me of
relatives we lost to the Holocaust in Romania, especially because, at
the time, I felt that it validated my Jewishness. There was nothing
else to prove. But, of course, it validated nothing more than that one
day my great-grandmother stopped receiving letters from her
half-brother's wife, most likely because she was forced onto a death
train.
I can't say I inherited a mission to write but
it -and the approaching birth of my first daughter- inspired me. How
was I going to explain our heritage to my children knowing full well
that I didn't (and still don't) understand it myself. It's not
something I agonize over but it is something that I need them to know.
My two daughters are only a quarter Jewish, a quarter Italian, and then
it's anybody's guess after that. Just throw a dart at a map of Europe
and it'll likely land on one of their nationalities. Sometimes, I think
I identify more with being Jewish than anything else because of our
dwindling numbers, now only thirteen million, and it saddens me that my
daughters would have been considered non-Jews, according to the
Nuremberg Laws. The Jew would have been sufficiently bred out. Should I
be heartened to know that they're more Italian than any other
nationality in their blood?
This brings me to the one
question I have for you, Brandon. In THE GIRL WITHOUT ARMS, you write
about how you want children, when formerly you did not. In wanting
children, do you wonder how you will explain to them the histories that
comprise their beings? Will you explain it to them?
I
apologize if I've not answered all of your questions...there's simply
too much to try to answer. And, I haven't proofread this, so forgive
any inconsistencies.
Your friend, always,
Adam
Adam,
There's
a photograph further up in this conversation of a man with an enormous
(hydrocephalic?) head. Who is he? Did you mention him already? His head
is terrifying. I cannot help but think that his enormous head is
concealing something truly monstrous, something struggling to break free
from the confines of the man's enormous skull, a secret (or maybe a
sick joke) that if released would become an unstoppable contagion, you
know what I mean? And the look in his eyes: the look of pure,
calculating death. I hope you don't take offense to this -- I mean, if
this man is one of your ancestors. If so, and in exchange, I've posted a
photo of my grandfather (above). This was taken at Fort Missoula's
Department of Justice camp, in 1943. He's getting fitted for a wig in
preparation for a performance. To answer Liz's question as to whether or
not it was coincidental that I chose Missoula as a home for four years,
knowing that my grandfather had been incarcerated there: I don't know.
Yes and No. I've been asked this question a lot, and especially since
I've written so much about his imprisonment, and I'm still not sure,
though I suppose I cannot deny at least the subconscious understanding
that I had to be there, to live in that environment, in order to know,
if only fractionally more, my grandfather and his experience, and
especially if I had any illusions of writing about him. I think I only
realized why I was there after the fact, though I'm still trying to
understand why I've lived anywhere. For example, I just moved to Tucson,
Arizona three weeks ago, and I have no concrete reason why. Which I
prefer, actually. The gap in pure reason allows for much greater
possibility.
Two quick things, because I can't even begin a gloss on
my time in Japan. Ostracism: I was never ostracized, but I was called
out once for, as I say, not being white, I guess: on the school bus,
first day of first grade, Scotland Elementary School, one of the older
kids started making fun of me for being "Portuguese." He pulled at the
corners of his eyes with his fingers, you know, in that typically
offensive manner of depicting Asian eyes, and in a high-pitched voice,
yelled at me, "Portuguese, Portuguese!" Of course, he had no idea what
he was talking about, but I was offended, and since "Portuguese" sounded
close enough to "Japanese" (the "-ese"), I felt like he KNEW something
about me that I didn't yet know. I blushed, and was quiet. I haven't
forgotten that. That was the extent of being picked on for NOT being
white, though not necessarily for being something else, since the dude
misfired. I have another Ridgefield, CT story related to this, but I'll
save that shit for later ...
Anyway,
brother, there is so much to respond to, and especially in the field of
SELF-HATE, and in the proposition of it being an inherited trait passed
down through the ages of a particular ethnicity or community. Perhaps
we should spin off another page on this blog devoted exclusively to the
topic: a private confessional. I could find so much there by which to be
confused and angered and INSPIRED. Of course, what is most interesting
to me, right now, anyway, and in the context of this conversation, is
how that, and your, self-hatred, has engendered the urgent attempt to
"uncover and archive as much family history as possible" before your
ancestors have all finally broken with this earth, this incarnation.
What I find most interesting is the idea that HATRED, self- or
otherwise, could be transmuted into LOVE, and in the form of rescuing
the casualties of that self-hatred and preserving them in a way that not
only might put them beyond the reach of malevolence, but also return
them to life and to liberty!
This
might be rewinding things to the very beginning, but good: Why do you
think or feel that it is important to "uncover and archive as much
family history as possible"? I mean, you personally. At what point did
you realize that this was important? What do you fear in not being able
to achieve what you're envisioning -- that is, as family members
continue to pass away, and the individual histories go lost to the ages?
And how is this related to the investigation into your identity, as
taking place, partially, on this blog? Wherefore the fire inside you?
And lastly, how does this all relate to writing? Do you ever feel like
you've "inherited" a particular mission?
By
the way, I realize these responses are LONG, but they can only be long,
right? Until we blow up our fucking computers and move down the street
from one another. The problem, of course, is that so much falls through
the cracks in our responses -- so many questions left unanswered, so
many profound statements and stories left unaddressed. But such is the
flow. Missing you deeply,
Brandon
Brandon:
Welcome home from your travels, of which I'll ask momentarily.
In
answer to your first query: self-hate. It is the reason for the
nascent denial and subsequent attempts at "exorcism" of my Jewish
heritage and yet the most trite characteristic description of Jews. The
two may as well be synonymous. And, while I was terribly insecure as a
teen, what teen isn't? Surely, this is not an adequate reason for such
disgust. I'd hypothesize that after millennia of external, targeted
hatred bent on Jews for so many centuries, what else could this who are
Jewish feel toward themselves? If you hate a child long enough, if you
belittle and bully a juvenile from the moment of his or her existence,
won't that child believe it? Won't that child hate himself, too? Maybe
that's too easy. Nevertheless, I can't help thinking that there's
truth to the self-hatred that courses through American Jews. Perhaps
it's reaching. Perhaps, it simply exists because so many influential
Jews say it exists. Philip Roth, of course, the extreme example, harps
on it, feeds on it, brands it into his work. As much as I love and
embrace his novels, as much as I write under his pervasive influence, if
Philip Roth were your cultural leader, wouldn't you hate yourself, too.
I
don't recall the "moment" when I realized this, although there were
certainly defining events: one of our mutual friends attempted to
convert me to Catholicism, insisting that I pray each night in order to
avoid Hell; I was ridiculed for picking a penny up from the gym floor,
the money-hoarding Jew image clearly portrayed by this act; and, of
course, my fervent participation on those Christian weekend retreats in
order to get laid. Whether these events were formative or coincidental,
I could argue for both. Undoubtedly, though, the self-hatred persisted
sufficiently enough to place me, now, in the position of scrambling to
uncover and archive as much family history as possible before the last
of my elders leaves this existence. Within this, there is a defining
moment that has summoned back to my Jewish lineage: the discovery that
Romanian relatives were, in fact, victims of the Holocaust. There is
shame, of course, that it took such a realization to endear me to
Judaism but I suppose it's never too late.
As
for your second batch of questions, my parents and I never discussed
our ethnicity because I was never interested until much later in life.
Where this trip to Japan may be a defining moment for your
self-understanding, my visit to the National Holocaust Museum and every
viewing of Goodfellas are defining moments for me. There were
never real discussions about these things with my parents because we
wanted to blend into the Ridgefield pastoral; the was no room for yarmulkes or unibrows. My brother's bar mitzvah
may as well have been a confirmation ceremony as given the Gentile:Jew
ratio of 3:1. It's not that we actively discouraged discussion of the
topic. It's more that we became complacent about being Italian or
Jewish. This complacency, in my case, offered no resistance to my
rampage of assimilation, albeit a transmogrification into the fringe.
My
questions to you: what was it the majority saw in you when you write
that you were ostracized for being "something?" Was it that you were
Japanese or simply edgy and apart from the norm? More importantly, what
of your travels to Japan? I wonder if they have influenced your
self-understanding or if it is just my hope that this is the case or
even, perhaps, that I hope you want this to be true.
And,
a question from my wife: was it coincidental that you chose Missoula,
the city of your grandfather's incarceration, as your home for the
better part of the last decade?
Adam
Adam,
At
the risk of breaking the narrative, let me apologize for the lapse in
response. We're now in Kaohsiung City, in southern Taiwan, and much
movement has transpired since you last wrote. And yet, I've been
carrying this conversation with me, as it feels as important to absorb
it as it does to unfold it, or let it unfold. We are flying to Japan in
fifteen days, so an immediate relevance here, in thinking through some
of these things.
Before
confronting your battery of questions, one persists for me, and maybe
unanswerable -- and that is: What is (or was) the source of your
"self-directed anti-Semitism"? Where did this come from, and when did it
arrive? Do you recall a point, or moment, in your youth, when you
suddenly felt this specific animus, at least ambivalence, towards being
Jewish? Did it originate purely within a certain regard, or lack
thereof, you held for yourself? Or did it arise from some external
source? Was there some kind of personal or familial crisis out of which
these feelings arose? No doubt this is a supremely difficult question to
answer, and one likely at the root of this entire inquiry. Maybe we
could take for granted the grace of objective distance to the subject.
But, I'm curious -- and especially because you reference it as a fact,
having "wanted nothing to do with being Jewish," defying it with your
fleeting turn to Jesus, etc., without establishing the conditions that
made it so. A lot of hard-hitting questions up front, I know, and maybe
better addressed in the midst of some other thought, or walking in the
woods. But here we are ...
I'm
perpetually struggling through my own take on things, and part of that
struggle is in understanding -- to address one of your parting questions
-- whether or not I embrace/embraced both my Japanese and "English
Isle" selves equally. The answer is no, though perhaps I would also
qualify the word "embrace," since I do embrace all of my facets equally,
however I might be more interested in investigating the nature of one
facet over the others. My mother did not imbue my sister or me with a
foundational curiosity in the ethnic heritage/history of her side of the
family. She rarely referenced her Caucasian (Scottish, Irish, English,
Welsh, etc.) roots, and in fact, was much more invested in the culture
and history of far-eastern Asia than she was in her own culture and
history. She has traveled throughout Japan, China and Korea, speaks a
little of the language of each country, and for a time, was friends
primarily with Asians and Asian-Americans. She studied East Asian
religion and Japanese art history in college. Though she didn't reject her
own ethnic heritage, she certainly did not embody an active interest in
it. This has changed a little bit in the intervening decades, but so it
was true as we were growing up. What complicated this further was the
fact that my father -- himself Japanese-American, the second son of two
Japanese parents -- was NOT particularly invested in his own cultural
heritage, at least as far as I could perceive. The origins of his more
"passive" relationship to Japanese culture and history, for example, can
be traced back to his own parents' experience as "enemy aliens" during
World War II; they emerged from that experience determined towards a
more inconspicuous citizenship. So while my father is Japanese, my sister and I inherited our Japanese culture primarily from our mother,
who is Caucasian, and if we didn't exactly inherit our Caucasian
culture from our father, we at least inherited a complicated
relationship to cultural heritage, in general. So, some things to sort
out. In the past decade or so, my father has thrown himself fully into a
different relationship with Asia -- he runs a non-profit organization
based out of Laos, and travels frequently to southeast Asia and China.
So
... my interests began locally, and were also related to immediate
conflict. Let me put it this way, for a second: I was never picked on
for being white. I was however picked on for being ... something. These
encounters have been infrequent, since I believe I am more nebulous
than not, but ... I'll write about this later. Anyway, I have always
been acutely fascinated by the wartime internment of Japanese-Americans,
and have also always been acutely fascinated by the bombings of
Nagasaki and Hiroshima. My grandfather was born in Hiroshima, and he was
imprisoned in a federal detention center in Missoula, Montana, in 1942.
So my interest begins there, with the locality of my grandfather, and
the locatable experiences of his life. I know very little about my
mother's parents -- again, partly because of something that wasn't fully
transferred between her and me, and partly because that history is more
diffuse. Maybe it only feels that way. After all, my father's parents
are both 100% Japanese. Any investigation I might initiate has at least a
superficially concentrated source. My mother's parents, however, are
each a different combination of Caucasian ethnicities; in addition to
those of the British Isle, there is also a low percentage of each of
German and Italian on my grandmother's side. Any investigation I might
initiate through that side of my family must already begin in numerous
landscapes at once. Of course, it is monumentally worthy, and I will get
there. I'm being slightly reductive in everything I'm saying -- there
is boundless complexity on all sides, and especially in my parents'
respective relationships with their own backgrounds. But ... there must
be something else at the root of this, as well, above and beyond what I
just said.
While
the delineations are fresh on the mind, I'm curious now about your
parents, and about each of their relationships to their ethnic
heritages. What was imparted to you and your brother, what was withheld
-- what seemed absent from the conversation, and what maybe still is
absent? Were they vocal about their own feelings and questions about
their ethnic backgrounds? Wasn't your father excommunicated from the
Catholic Church for marrying your mother? I vaguely remember this,
though more as a headline than a multidimensional story. Have their
relationships to their own backgrounds changed as they've gotten older?
Do you talk with them about any of these things -- what we're talking
about now?
Brandon
Brandon,
Much
then as it is now, my "private" and "public" lives were entirely at
odds with each other. They chose not, or rather I refused, to let them
coexist. And, it was very much a result of my own self-directed
anti-Semitism. I had no knowledge of being Jewish or Italian, wanted
nothing to do with being Jewish, and further denied it's existence in my
DNA, if I may suggest that there is a genetic code for such. My
fleeting relationship with Jesus was in fact a denial and largely a
defiance. Simultaneously, it validated my Italian heritage and allowed
me to create a life of half-truth.
Perhaps
it might have been different had I had a similar experience to your
trip to Japan. Regardless, I was quite willing to accept the Italian
and shun the Jew. Had I the knowledge of my perished ancestors during
the Holocaust in Romania, I wonder if that would have affirmed to me
that I was a "certified" Jew. Would I have embraced it? I don't know.
I had the melodramatic and adolescent notion that history with the
Holocaust would have authenticated my Semitic roots. But, even my
"private" self was conflicted as I wanted the authenticity but refused
it with inaction: I chose not to be bar mitzvahed because, as I write in
Mischling, I didn’t want to learn that “froggish language.”
I
struggle to understand the need for this authentication and all I
conclude is the invisibility of my heritage; I didn't and don't appear
Jewish. Perhaps I look a little Italian but do not exhibit any of the
stereotypical Jewish traits. Being "American" or an Italian American or a
Jewish American was simply not enough to satisfy or interest or
engender investment in familial history.
When
finally I resolved that I could not understand it, I isolated it,
disguised it, neglected and forgot it. So, when you ask, "What did you
know, and not yet know?" I answer, "Nothing, and everything." I often
speak in hyperbole but any knowledge of my separate selves, anything
other than superficial facts, was limited to what I learned in movies
and books.
And
so, Brandon, I ask you is whether you isolated one of your "selves,"
consciously or unconsciously? Did your selves isolate you? If you
didn't segregate either side, then why not? Did you embrace both
Japanese and English Isle equally? Certainly, as I've written elsewhere,
I've rarely acknowledged all of my selves equitably. In asking, I feel
as if I've loaded the question. You seem to have had a much different
experience in relation to your ethnicity.
Adam
Adam,
There
are so many ways to think about this, and so many of them will prove
ineffectual against the wall of what is true: Who knows? There is no way
of going back to truly know, and yet in every sense, the past has
become the present.
I
think of a couple of things right away. One: that as teenagers we took a
great deal for granted. This is beyond dispute. And this includes,
among an enormous swell of other ideas, places, possibilities, et
cetera, each other, as friends, as individuals in the world. However
unfortunate this was then, I don't see it as necessarily a bad thing,
since we come into our curiosities and appreciations organically, when
we do. But even more so, part of this "taking for granted," when not due
to a lack of awareness, attention or respect, helped us be present, in a
way, with each other, without feeling the need to form totalizing
pictures of each other. We enjoyed hanging out, and that seemed to be
justification enough for who we were, why we were friends, etc. Deeper
inquiries into our identities would come later, once they were made
vulnerable and explicit by the world beyond childhood ...
Of
course, it feels like a cop-out to articulate it this way, because we
did talk a lot back then -- we spent a lot of time talking, discussing
things, figuring things out, as friends, as friends within a group of
friends. The specific question is why didn't we talk about our
ethnicity, our backgrounds? And I might ask in return: Didn't we? I
don't remember talking about this in a focused way (i.e. in the way that
we are starting to now), but I also don't remember NOT talking about it
at all. Certainly these things were on our minds. But, this brings me
to my second thought ...
And
that is that our identities are always divided, and in a primary sense
between our "public" and "private" selves. I know that my "private" self
of the 1990s spent a great deal of time thinking about my ethnic
heritage, and in relation to the cultural and social context of
Ridgefield, Connecticut. Admittedly, this thinking revolved around being
half-Japanese, more so than being of Scottish and Irish ancestry, since
there were so few people of Asian descent then living in Ridgefield. My
family visited Japan for the first time when I was 10 years old, and
that trip had an enormous impact on me, primarily in the form of opening
up a wealth of questions about my relationship to being Japanese, and
especially a new understanding of not being Japanese, but being Japanese-American,
and the differences there. My awareness of Japanese-American internment
during the second World War began intensifying around this time as
well, with my grandparents at the center of my concern. But all of these
engagements -- questions, considerations, researches, etc. -- were more
or less "privately" held. What I shared "publicly" was different. That
is to say, what I withheld, or (maybe) sublimated, or hadn't yet been
able to articulate to my "private" self, or just didn't feel confident
enough to express, was vast. And so, despite reveling in the fact that
my friends were so good at helping to talk/work through the problems and
questions of life, some things were left out of those conversations. Of
course, there is nothing extraordinary about the divided self, in this
explanation -- its how we live our lives! And often needfully so ... And
yet, its not so simple. There were certainly obstructions to talking
about these things, you and me, and whatever those obstructions might
have been, owe some debt to the "cultural and social context of
Ridgefield, Connecticut." It was an age, we were young, we were just
then coming into the world, but we did so in a very particular place.
So
I'm curious then about your "private" life back then, in the
early-to-mid 1990s. Are you able to differentiate your "private" life
from your "public"? Are you able to make sense of what you withheld from
one or the other, from one or the other? You were writing poems and
short stories, reading novels by Andre Schwarz-Bart (The Last of the Just)
and Philip Roth (right? or was he later?). Hell, you were even
investigating your relationship to Jesus H. Christ -- which didn't seem
so much an investigation as a reaction, in fact. But a reaction to what?
Do or did you feel like your "private" and "public" lives/selves were
at odds with one another? What was your relationship to your ethnic
heritage at the time? What did you know, or not yet know? That's a huge
question, I realize, but maybe to begin placing us individually --
beginning to understand who we were "privately" -- in order to better
understand who we were "publicly," and therefore why we did or did not
ever talk about things that were obviously so important to both of us
...
Brandon
Brandon:
Why, my good friend, do you suppose that after nearly twenty years of friendship, only now are we discussing each other's ethnicity? That only now are we beginning to ask about questions of heritage, if one might call it that? Was I do afraid to ask? Too concerned of offense? Too disinterested? Too complacent? Perhaps, there's no need for dialogue or even thought or attention to the topic. Perhaps, such over-thinking is uncomfortable, even melodramatic. Perhaps, I am over-thinking that we were ever uncomfortable about it.
A little exposition for the casual reader: Brandon is a Japanese and Scottish-English-Irish American, I am an Italian Jew. We've been friends since 1992: freshman year of high school in a quaint New England town known for many events in history, not for its diversity. In that time, we've recently determined that we've never discussed our ethnicity. Not once.
Shouldn't we have, if only once? I'd like to think that our friendship transcended such a necessity. I'd like to think that we never knew about such differences between us, that I never noticed the Asian features of your eyes, that you never heard me mention Yom Kippur. This, however, is hubris.
Why didn't we ever talk about this? Was it repulsion or disinterest? Even now, why am I writing with you on this in a forum where I may censor my language, revise my thoughts, and calculate my intentions without fear of the misinterpretation of dialogue?
