Exit, Miss Saigon

In his introduction to Exit, Miss Saigon, Mura gives a picture of a young Asian American writer who might have been called a “banana”—yellow on the outside, white on the inside. What are the ways Mura wants to shun associations with other Asian Americans and what are the reasons he thinks this way? The term “banana” is a rather crude designation which is meant to echo Orea—black on the outside, white on the inside. What do these two terms say about race in America? What might be the advantages of acting and thinking like a “banana”? Why does Mura abandon his pursuit of a white
identity?

In the introduction to Exit, Miss Saigon, Mura examines the term Asian American; he cites Jay Caspian Kang’s argument that Asian Americans are the “loneliest Americans” and that Asian American identity is “cartoonish” and “blurry,” a misguided attempt to bring together different Asian ethnic groups under one category. In contrast, Mura states that for him, “the term has served as a field of inquiry, as a launching space for the arts and political organizing, as a way of combatting the loneliness and alienation Asian Americans often feel in American society.” In what ways does Exit, Miss Saigon demonstrate Mura’s assertion that the term is useful? How did adopting the term change the ways Mura processes his own identity? How does the book explore the term Asian American as a “field of inquiry,” as a tool to analyze racism against Asian Americans? What was your knowledge or understanding of the term Asian American before you read the book, and how has the book changed your understanding of the term?

At the beginning of the book, Mura recounts the arguments he had with white artist friends over the issues coming out of Miss Saigon. What does he find objectionable about that musical that his white artist friends do not? Mura wrote about the arguments with white friends in an article in Mother Jones, and the article upset many of his white friends. What were they upset about? Why did Mura decide to end many of those friendships? Do you agree or disagree with his decision? Mura recounts how his Black writer friend Alexs Pate reacted very differently to Mura’s opposition to Miss Saigon, and how when Mura spoke at college campuses, BIPOC students reacted very differently to the arguments Mura was making about race. How do you evaluate these different viewpoints—Mura’s own views as an Asian American, Mura’s white artist friends, Mura’s friends and audiences of color?

In the book, Mura recounts how reading Black authors changed his views on race and gave him a language to discuss his own racial identity. Why and how did this happen? Similarly, he describes how his friendships and encounters with Black artists and activists changed his views on race. What were these changes and why did he make them? What do these Black authors and artist friends see and experience that Mura’s white friends did not? Throughout the book, through issues like Driving While Black, sexual stereotypes and the Rodney King beating, Mura makes contrasts and connections between how Asian Americans experience race and the ways African Americans experience race. What are those differences and similarities? Have you thought about the relationships between the Asian American and African American communities before? Are you surprised that Mura choose to write about this relationship and if so, why?

In various ways, Exit, Miss Saigon, critiques the racial stereotypes and preconceptions concerning Asians and Asian Americans. These range from racial antagonisms towards Asians that stem from conflicts between the US and Asian Americans (Asians are always a potential fifth column) to the view of Asians as quiet, withdrawn, not leadership material to the gendered sexual stereotypes of Asian men and women. How does Mura relate these stereotypes to the history of Western colonialism in Asia? Why do the sexual stereotypes of Asian women and Asian men so differ? How are these stereotypes related to the issues in Miss Saigon? How does Mura critique these stereotypes and how do those stereotypes play a role in his critique of Miss Saigon? How does Mura relate these stereotypes to Japanese American history?

In section two, Mura particularly focuses on the gendered racial stereotypes of Asian American men—that they are unattractive, unassertive and unmasculine, and that they are under endowed sexually. Mura critiques these stereotypes in various different ways. He notes for instance that Asian men and Black women are the least swiped on dating apps and he relates this in part to rigid ideas about gender. Do you believe there is a racialized hierarchy of beauty and sexual attractiveness? How does Mura use LGBTQ theory to analyze Asian American identity and explain, critique and undermine these stereotypes? How does David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly critique these stereotypes and how is Hwang’s play related to Mura’s critique of Miss Saigon?

In his essay, Armed With Language, Mura recounts the accomplishments of the Military Intelligence Service Japanese Americans in WWII in the Pacific; he implicitly contrasts their quiet, modest masculinity and their huge contribution to the war effort with a hyper nationalist masculine identity. Many of these men were recruited from concentration camps set up by the US government to remove 120,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast. What does this essay say about the current anti-immigrant sentiment and government actions like ICE’s Operation Metro-Surge? What are lessons we should learn about the value of diversity from the contributions of the MIS Nisei to the war effort?

Throughout the book, but particularly in the second and third sections, Mura examines the issue of internalized racism—the ways he and other Asian Americans look at themselves negatively or attempt to deny their racial identity due to racial stereotypes. How was Mura’s struggle with internalized racism shaped by the ways his Japanese American parents reacted to their imprisonment by the US government as teenagers during WWII? How did his work to create an Asian American community-based arts organization change his relationship to other Asian Americans and thus, to his own sense of identity? How did meeting other Asian American artists help him understand his own struggles with identity, such as his arguments with white friends over Miss Saigon? What similarities did he find in his experience of traveling to Japan and the playwright’s Philip Gotanda’s stay in Japan? In Asia, a Chinese national would not necessarily see any bond with a Japanese national; and yet Mura formed bonds with Chinese American artists like Li-Young Lee and Marilyn Chin. Why is this? How does this illustrate significant differences between Asians and Asian Americans?

In the third section, Mura uses the work of literary critic David Eng and psychologist Shinhee Han, Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation: On the Social and Psychi Lives of Asian Americans. How does Mura explain the concepts of racial melancholia and racial dissociation? What does it mean that Eng and Han assert that some Asian Americans mourn for a white identity they will never possess? What are the components of that white identity? Why would an Asian American like Mura wish to be white? How does his discussion of this book link with an overall criticism of the way therapy is generally practiced in America—that is, the ways therapy fails to deal with race and thus, with an essential component of the lives of people of color? How does racial dissociation relate to the negative stereotypes concerning the way Asian American look, how they are evaluated according to sexualized stereotypes? How does Mura see Asian American art and activism as helping him and other Asian Americans combat their own internalized racism and the negative stereotypes they face in American society?

In the third section of the book, Mura writes about his experiences at VONA, a BIPOC writing conference. He recounts what he learned from the other writers on the faculty and what he learned from his students about other ethnic and racial identities and histories. How is he affected by his experiences at VONA? How does it change his view of artistic standards and his own work? What does he learn at VONA? What are the benefits for Asian Americans that Mura sees in learning about other BIPOC communities? How does he contrast the experience of BIPOC writers in white dominated workshops as opposed to what the BIPOC writers experience in a multiracial space like VONA?