You Gave the Enemy a Face—and That Face Was Mine
In America, we like to be heroes—to find our enemies and defeat them. So, in a pandemic where the enemy is not visceral, we create one that is.
We Asian Americans need to embrace and prove our American-ness in ways we never have before . . . we should show without a shadow of a doubt that we are Americans.
[In contemporary narratives] the monster, while initially perceived as terrible and an outsider, proves himself through his actions and his ability to care for othersThe Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore
Who is sickWho is ?

The intriguing part of disease legends,is that in addition to fear of illness, they express primarily a fear of outsiders.
It is very important that we totally protect our Asian American community . . . They are amazing people, and the spreading of the Virus is NOT their fault in any way, shape, or form. They are working closely with us to get rid of it.
about to They are working closely with us to get rid of it. They who is ?
real
Los Angeles TimesA viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched. A leopard’s spots are the same and its disposition is the same wherever it is whelped.
You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good?You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned into hell!
It was in the afternoon when we reached [the camp]From there we first got a glimpse of the center. I was wondering how will they ever put all of us in a small place that small . . . What surprised me most was why did the soldiers have to stand guard with guns . . . and to tell you the truth the way some people stared at us, it chilled me a bit.
Each block had a town hall meeting to discuss whether to volunteer The Issei , our parents, they said, ‘Why should our sons fight for a country that put us in a concentration camp?’ But the Nisei , we thought,‘This is the only country we know.’

race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.
circulated to promote capitalism and to undermine the credibility of black civil rights,
Reality is not the purpose of disease narratives,Instead, one population tells these narratives about another population, thus giving the stories a focus that is elsewhere and defining the infected population as something that is definitively Other.
We:
We [Asian Americans] are reputed to be so accomplished, and so law-abiding, that we will disappear into this country’s amnesiac fog

Individual Japanese Americans were quite willing to go to HBCUs,
Jami Nakamura Lin is the author of THE NIGHT PARADE (Mariner Books/HarperCollins and Scribe UK 2023), an illustrated memoir that uses yokai & other Japanese , Taiwanese, & Okinawan folklore to investigate what haunts us. A former Catapult columnist, she's written for the New York Times, Electric Literature, and other publications.
Jami has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts/Japan-US Friendship Commission, Yaddo, Sewanee, and We Need Diverse Books.
Twitter: @jaminlin / jaminakamuralin.com
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