Passion and the Asian American Legal Scholar

When I was in law school, I wrote a short story called "Orientals Anonymous." It opens with a group of people milling around in a room. Then someone calls the meeting to order. A man stands up and says, "Hi, my name is Sam. I'm an Oriental." People clap. A woman stands up and says, "Hi, my name is Beth. And I'm an Oriental." Again, people clap. It is a story about recovery and a sense that to grow up Asian American in the United States is to grow up as a recovering oriental, a term that contains within it not only the question, "What are we recovering from?", but also, "What are we trying to recover?" These questions of loss and recovery are explored in the context of African American identity by Countee Cullen, a poet of the Harlem Renaissance. The poem Heritage begins: What is Africa to me: Copper sun, a scarlet sea, Jungle star and jungle track, Strong bronzed men and regal black Women from whose loins I sprang When the birds of Eden sang? One three centuries removed From the scenes his fathers loved Spicy grove and banyan tree, What is Africa to me?1 Literary critic Walter Benn Michaels notes that Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., cites to this poem "as evidence of a traditional African American indifference to Africa."2 He argues, though, that Schlesinger misunderstands or hasn't read the entire poem: For although the scenes the father loved are initially presented as "unremembered" by the son, the tendency to forget (as if Africa