7:16pm November 25, 2013

Regarding some recent criticism on my dash about Cho Chang’s name

I was glad that Cho’s name was “stereotypical.” I was glad that she had an “Asian” name. Why? Because I have an Asian name that most English speakers can’t pronounce. Because my mother felt pressured to choose an English name when I was nine and she was developing her career. She thought people in the work place wouldn’t take her seriously with her given name “Mi Young” which means, “illuminated.”

I was so disappointed when she picked “Esther.” I felt like she was ashamed of having a Korean name and an accent when speaking English. That her Korean name only further made her an “other.”

When my younger cousins immigrated to go to school here, I made my mother promise me she wouldn’t make them take English names and I told them that if any kids asked them what their “American” names were, to tell them to shove a stick up their asses.

A lot of Asian names sound stereotypical to people who aren’t Asian and (I find) it’s typically because other people are only accustomed to their Asian friends’ English names. Most Asians have a name from their culture. They’ve just learned to adopt English names or give their children English names to ensure a degree of assimilation.

English names are to assure Westerners that we may eat with chopsticks and speak in a funny language but you don’t have to be afraid of us because we have names you can pronounce. We have “normal non-meaningful ethnically ambiguous” names.

But English names are meaningful. They’re indicative of Europe and North America. I can’t speak for every non-English speaking culture, but for the Koreans I know, for a lot of the Asians I know, English names are not ethnically ambiguous. They are explicit and clear and Westernizing. “Normalizing.” Because Mi Young is not a normal name by Western standards.

I see a lot of criticism for PoC characters who don’t have “normal, non-meaningful” names (typically from white people, go figure.) To follow that logic, it means they find names indicative of a culture or ethnicity to be unusual and strange. That Mi Young and Ayaan and Quvenzhané indicate a sense of otherness that makes people uncomfortable. And I can only guess why our names make them uncomfortable.

So I have to side eye when people decry authors for being racist by giving their PoC characters names indicative of their ethnicity. Why do we have to be the same as the white characters? Why can’t we retain our ethnicity in our names? Why do we have to put aside our culture and traditions for your comfort?

People say, “We need to criticize children’s books because they shape the thinking of their young audience. We need to point out the blatant racism of giving a character a name that clearly indicates their ethnicity. We need to highlight the fact that that is the only purpose of their name: to indicate the character’s ethnicity.” No. Stop. You are reducing a PoC to the significance of their name in an attempt to call out racism. In your meta, you are erasing a character’s personality to critique their ethnically indicative name. By extension, you are telling young readers that names indicative of ethnicity are strange and unusual. More characters should have names indicative of their ethnicity. If children’s books shape the thinking of their young audience, then we need to teach children that they will meet others with names that are different from theirs and that that’s okay and we should not pressure them to choose an English name.

I mean, yes, it is one thing if a character is a caricature but if there is a respectful, well-rounded character with an ethnically indicative name, that is not inherently racist.