Last night I had the chance to watch a one-woman show about suicide for asian american females. Before the show started I had been expecting some sort of adaption of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," however I have never read the book or watched the movie so I really didn't know what to expect.
The show begins with a Mr. Rogersque opening. Wong walks around the stage in a green cardigan and puts on a pair of shoes, and then begins to talk to the audience. Wong begins a 1-hour monologue with an occasional interlude for some audience participation / heckling to talk about her personal life, her past, and her own dealings with suicide. Half the time the show is a comedy routine with Wong poking fun at race and dropping one liners for laughs. The other half of the show is about why asian american females are killing themselves, and why its impossible we the audience should expect to find an answer by the end of her one hour show.
One of her most poignant anecdotes comes about 3/4 into the show when she begins to point out how few examples there are of asian american women who have survived suicide. On one end of the spectrum she points to celebrities who never had to deal with suicide, and then she begins to detail asian american women who have dealt with severe trauma in one form or another and survived: they are all porn stars. She briefly details the lives of Asia Carrera and Annabelle Chong. The former a piano prodigy who ran away from home to escape abusive parents and would sleep with strangers just to survive. The latter a gang rape survivor who would later pioneer on screen triple penetration and who was cheated out of money she should have been paid for performing one of the first one-day ultra gang bang marathons where she had sex with over 300 men. Wong's dramatic conclusion is that you have no choice but tol be perfect, turn into a porn star, or not live.
At one point in the show she begins to delve into cases of asian american suicide. A profile will flash up on the screen, giving such details as location and reasons associated with the suicide as she begins to monologue what might have been their last thoughts. The second case is about a girl named liz from cambridge, ma who is suffering depression and anxiety from grades and sets herself on fire. To me this is immediately recognizable as Elizabeth Shin from MIT, a girl who committed suicide the summer before I arrived for my freshmen year. After the first 4 cases the profiles on the screen begin to flash by as she races to even just provide names for them. By the end, the case numbers have reached past the tens of thousands. I am not sure most people realized that those were in fact real cases she was detailing.
The most interesting part of the evening came after the show was over. I was talking with four
asian american females who had seen the show, and not a single one had much to say! In contrast, after I had seen the latest harry potter movie every asian american female was up in arms at the way Harry had treated Cho Chang in the movie.
You can find out more about Kristina Wong here:
http://www.kristinawong.com/
http://www.bigbadchinesemama.com/
4 comments:
well lucky that you mention it b/c there are 4 asian american girls that contribute to this blog! and after reading your review, I don't have a whole lot to say either. to be fair though, a lot was just presented to me that i was not previously aware of. i could offer up the fact that i have considered suicide but have never attempted it. not good material for post show banter. i can imagine that the girls you were with could relate to what Wong said, but Wong had already said it all. i AM interested in the statistics for asian american male suicides, did Wong mention anything about that? i've always thought american culture was more demanding on them, plus they can't default to becoming pornstars.
well. that's depressing. i would say there's a general problem in society concerning the overwhelming significance placed on grades and other such numbers like how many dollars you can make in an hour. that in addition to stigmatization of depression and anxiety (and also porn stars) and lack of readily available/affordable mental health. why isn't it normal to get psychological check-ups? shouldn't we have preventive mental health care? like a physical for your head. and asian americans just have it all worse. anyway. as for asian-am males vs. females. i think in a lot of asian families, it's taught that the females have a certain image to uphold, and so guys and girls expect it of females. which is sucky. and asian-am males have to compete with big confident white boys for their precious asian-am females, all the while attempting to placate the doctor father that wants the heir to the family throne to continue the longstanding tradition of doctorly-ness (i think this pressure is about the same for girls, although slightly less maybe). i think my point was that asian-am guys and girls both have their fair share of familial/cultural burdens. maybe it was that there's more pressure for the girl to act the right way than for the guy to become king of the jungle. i think this comment is deteriorating, so i will leave it at that, and say good night.
HAHAHAHA
i like lynn's comment
oh hey, seriously, though. in terms of chinese boys vs. girls. i guess you do see a lot of depressed boys but in general they are too pussy to take their own lives. perhaps it is because even though they are depressed, they feel responsible for carrying on the family name. especially with the one child policy, boys are really important to the whole family. girls feel like they are dispensible. another thing is that even though all chinese feel the need to have face and an image, for much of chinese history, at least men were the economic providers and so their skills may make up for bad ettiquette. for women, their success depended solely on their image and reputation. even though that is changing, i think women feel depressed that their skills are not as appreciated and instead there is this focus on image for them.
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