Son Goku or Superman

By Kevin Ahn

S

on Goku or Superman

One of my favorite stories is Akira Toriyama’s manga/anime Dragon Ball. Loosely inspired by the novel Journey to the West, Dragon Ball follows a young boy named Son Goku, who enjoys martial arts which helps him to fight strong opponents and push his limits. While Dragon Ball never explicitly states its Asian setting, Toriyama prominently features Asian food, martial arts, and characters with dark hair and eyes. These examples may sound simple, but my younger self, who grew up on white superheroes like Superman, instantly felt a deeper connection to Goku as I experienced Asian representation for the first time.

The Limits of Representation

AAPI representation is at an all time high. Movies and shows like Beef and Shogun, Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, and Shang-Chi are critical and commercial successes. And that’s not including other Asian media like Squid Game and Parasite, or athletes like Sunisa Lee, Chloe Kim and Shohei Ohtani. Despite all this success, why does it still feel like we have not “made it” in the US? Why do Asian Americans still face racism in various forms today? As comedian Josh Johnson recently said, "...entertainment is a form of escapism, and no one ever escaped their chains by forgetting they were there."

Stories are important, but they are powerless without narrative. While the two terms seem interchangeable they are quite distinct. When high school English teachers describe plot, rising action and climax, they are describing elements of story. Narratives are the themes and ideas that are internalized based on those elements. As humans, we absorb both true and false narratives, while also having difficulty discerning which is which.

As Asian American Christians, we often understand our faith through a western lens. While there is nothing wrong with that, a purely western lens will not properly contextualize Asian American Christianity. Through skillful storytelling and powerful narratives, the AACC Civil Rights Tour helped contextualize and revitalize my understanding of being an Asian American Christian. On the first day, Dr. Soong-Chan Rah, a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, highlighted two differences between story and narrative framed within the context of US history. While we know the stories of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights Movement, we often fail to see how those stories impact us individually. During his seminar, Dr. Rah posed a question, “Does the church have anything to say about racial justice?” A quick read of the Bible gives a clear “yes,” but a follow-up question lingered: “Does the Asian-American church have anything to contribute to racial justice?”

AACC Civil Rights Tour

The Christian retreats I attended as a child tended to focus on self-improvement (e.g. growing closer to God, becoming more spiritual, etc.). But what made the AACC Civil Rights Tour so powerful was rather than exegeting a text and reflecting on spiritual shortcomings/victories, I was tasked with exegeting my surroundings and examining my whole self by identifying the false narratives that I had absorbed about being an Asian American Christian. I needed to break through to find a new narrative. Los Angeles is like a second home to me; my dad grew up in Echo Park and took us to Dodger games growing up. But seeing the beauty and brokenness of the Asian American experience in familiar places, helped me identify a false narrative that I’ve wrestled with my whole life: the lie of assimilation and exclusion.

On days two and three of the tour, we studied the stories of Japanese Americans at the Japanese American National Museum of History. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that all Japanese Americans were to be relocated for their “safety.” However, the reality was much more dehumanizing and racist. Second and even third generation immigrants, who had only known life in America, were forcibly removed from their homes and placed into relocation camps or facilities. At Manzanar the conditions were awful: shared toilets and showers with no stalls, wood houses that were smaller than the average living room, and barbed wire fences surrounding the perimeter.

Insult was added to injury when the incarcerated Japanese Americans were then conscripted into service during WWII, forming the 442nd Infantry Regiment/100th Infantry Battalion. The 442nd/100th served with excellence, becoming the most decorated unit of its size in history. Yet the message was quite clear: Not American enough to have a home, but American enough to die for one’s country.

At Manzanar one survivor shared their story on how this experience caused Japanese Americans to shed their Japanese identity. They believed that their Japanese heritage caused their incarceration. In order to prevent this from happening again in America, they believed that their identities must be further cast aside. The false narrative perpetuated by oppression was “assimilation to avoid exclusion.”

What Does the Asian American Church Have to Say?

There is a shared experience for us hyphenated Americans, especially of Asian descent, that cannot help but be moved by the Japanese American experience.

It is not uncommon for AAPI children to wrestle with their Asian and American identities. Bringing Asian food to school, being called “Jackie Chan” or “Bruce Lee,” and being ostracized for not knowing the English language are shared experiences among many Asian Americans. The narrative I internalized (from my own personal experiences and those of my loved ones) was to assimilate. My grandfather taught at Seoul National University, which is the best university in Korea. However, when he immigrated to America, the only teaching job he could find was at Los Angeles City College, a local community college. The narrative that he passed on to us was to cast aside our Korean-ness and to become more American. That lesson still affects me to this day. I don’t speak Korean. I’ve learned how to cook Korean food through YouTube. But I often walk into AAPI spaces not feeling Asian enough. And yet, no matter how hard I tried to assimilate to whiteness that also was never enough. God had created and crafted me as a Korean American. What was I saying about God as a Creator, that I would so willingly throw away this part of myself?

Casting aside our ethnic identities in order to find belonging is a false narrative and a distinctly anti-Christian one. Two passages speak to this idea: Leviticus 19:33-34 and Jeremiah 29:4-11. In Leviticus, the Israelites, a people who were formerly enslaved in a foreign land, are instructed to care for the vulnerable foreigners in their land for they were once oppressed foreigners. Later, the Israelites are removed from their land and exiled to Babylon, the home of their conquerors, because they failed to advocate for justice for the oppressed. All hope seems lost as they have returned to the condition that God had rescued them from. Yet in Jeremiah, God tells them to seek the welfare of Babylon, for in it they will find their own welfare.

Asian Americans can often feel like exiled Israel, cut off from the land of our ancestors and unable to return. Other times, we feel like pre-exilic Israel, betraying our chosen identity for exceptionalism and prosperity. Yet we can find beauty in the brokenness of our stories.

In Dragon Ball Z, the sequel to Dragon Ball, Toriyama reveals that the reason for Goku’s immense strength is that he is descended from an alien race known as the Saiyans. The Saiyans are oppressed, enslaved, and forced to fight for a ruthless alien dictator named Frieza, whose tyranny is grounded in a fear that one day the Saiyans will become powerful enough to overthrow him. When he finally confronts the dreaded Frieza, Goku is beaten back time and time again. Yet it is revealed that his Saiyan DNA holds a special ability: every time he experiences defeat or loss, he returns stronger than ever. Eventually Goku’s multiple defeats lead him to overcome and defeat the evil Frieza. Goku’s pain is the source of his strength and the pathway to victory.

As Asian American Christians we understand the pains of assimilation and exclusion. As anti-immigrant rhetoric and legislation is on the rise and the diverse stories that actually make America great are being silenced, what does the Asian American church have to say? We should point out the dead end that the false narrative of assimilation and exclusion leads to, and we should advocate for the vulnerable by amplifying their voices. We fear exclusion and sticking out, because we have seen how painful that can be. But rather than assimilate we should recall the pains of being a foreigner in a strange land. Can we embrace the pain of our stories and seek the welfare of the city and its vulnerable members? After all, like Goku, our pain makes us stronger because we serve a God who raises the dead and brings beauty out of brokenness.

Photo credit: Abigail Erickson

---

Kevin Ahn is from Orange County, CA where he serves as the NextGen Pastor at EFree Diamond Bar. He and his wife Kelly have a son (August) and the best dog in the world (Rocky). Kevin loves LA sports teams, music, church history, and exploring different foods and cultures.

More Like this: