JAN 7 — When we first read Umapagan Ampikaipakan’s The New York Times article about the Asian comic superhero, we both responded with anger, frustration and a little sadness.

While we disagree (vehemently) with the premise of Uma’s argument – that Asians outside the United States do not need Asian superheroes, and the Asian superhero is an “oxymoron” – we also felt an uncomfortable familiarity with his ideas and experiences.

Both of us, Amanda and Louise, grew up in middle-class Malaysia, attending Chinese vernacular government schools, and are currently undergraduate students at pretentious universities in the US.

We also grew up loving stories — books, TV, anything we could get our hands on. In our respective corners of Penang and Petaling Jaya, with our noses stuck in books, we found companions and idols in: characters from second-hand Enid Blyton books, Kim Possible, Totally Spies, the Powerpuff Girls, Harry Potter…

In other words, all our childhood literary heroes were white.

As children, we didn’t think too much about this —the Western, white literature and media we consumed were awesome enough to inspire us to write our own stories.

When Amanda was eight, she attempted to pen her first “novel” (all of 12 pages long) but couldn’t quite figure out where to set it.

All the “real” storybooks she’d read came from England, a faraway land she’d never been to before; while she’d never read a “real” storybook from Malaysia.

In the end, she consulted a map, found the “midpoint” between England and Malaysia, and The Twins with the Magical Shoes was born… against the backdrop of ancient Egypt.

At 12, Louise was already a prolific writer, but all of her characters were white people with white names, and who lived in white American suburbs.

As she got older, she tried to write stories that were closer to her reality: featuring Malaysians who spoke Manglish, went to Malaysian schools and such.

But without other Malaysian stories to draw on, her words felt stilted and flimsy. She lacked confidence in her ability to tell her own stories, and eventually stopped writing altogether.

These were cases of “window books” versus “mirror books.”

We grew up with window books — stories through which we learnt about other worlds, especially white, Western worlds with fireplaces, summer holidays, marmalade, garages and frocks.

Only recently have we begun encountering mirror books — stories in which we see ourselves and our worlds reflected.

From the 1990s up to a few years ago, we grew up in Malaysia, but we never saw ourselves or characters like us in storybooks.

The stories we read were filled with Whiteness — hings and experiences we did not relate to because they were so different from our realities. Yet, because those were the only kind of stories we had access to, we related to Whiteness enough to fill our own stories with it.

So when an article like Uma’s emerges, we must respond: the white superhero is not at all universal.

The United States consists of more than just white people. Uma’s argument is one that white people have used to justify not having diverse representation, to justify the continued erasure of people of colour from media and literature.

As a result, non-white children in the US hardly see themselves represented on-screen.

The English-speaking, wealthy, formally educated white characters with comfortable suburban homes do not reflect the experiences of most people of colour, especially working class, recent immigrant and other marginalised communities.

If there are people of colour in media, they are often part of the scenery as taxi drivers and janitors, or at best the hero’s sidekick — never heroes in their own right. What kind of message does that send about their roles in society?

The creation of Kamala Khan — a Muslim, Pakistani-American young woman who becomes the superhero Ms Marvel — is deeply political. This is a significant step towards a US media world that more accurately reflects American society.

Just because Kamala is Asian American doesn’t mean she’s not important to Asians outside the US.

Asian representation in US media matters to us — not only as Malaysians studying in the US, but as Malaysians.

In a world saturated with US media, the two of us learnt about slavery in the US before we learnt about the coolie trade in Malaya.

We know more about Barack Obama than we do about our own members of parliament.

Of course, as we advocate for diverse representation in US media, there must be a concurrent push for Malaysian literature and media. We can advocate for Asian American superheroes and Malaysian superheroes.

Perhaps the nagging question is: “Asians can be superheroes meh?” This is another of Uma’s arguments: that the Asian superhero is an oxymoron.

He said: “How can an Asian superhero take down the bad guy without embarrassing both the bad guy’s family and his own? How do you save the world and save face at the same time?”

Asians can be superheroes and long have been. We don’t just mean contemporary Asian superheroes.

Many Malaysian kids grew up knowing Sang Kancil, Hang Tuah, Sun Wu Kong, Arjuna, Rama and more.

It’s more a question of which superheroes get represented on the big screen, in mainstream books and mass media — and why.

Maybe these superheroes didn’t seem as “cool” as Spiderman and Superman because there are hardly any million-dollar blockbusters and franchises being made about them.

Furthermore, the argument about “Asian values” falls apart because 4.4 billion people aren’t all the same. The idea is a social construct used by politicians like Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Lee Kuan Yew to justify their governments.

To say that Asians cannot be superheroes because of “Asian values” erases traditional and contemporary Asian superheroes, assumes all Asians are the same, and echoes a long history of racist oppression.

It tells Asians that we can only be part of someone else’s story, and never make our own stories. Having Asian superheroes is a way of changing all that.

We both dream of a day when no Malaysian children will have to write stories awkwardly set in ancient Egypt, or stop writing completely.

For that to happen, it’s up to us Malaysians to create more mirror stories that reflect our world — a world we are agents in creating, where we can all be ourselves and superheroes at the same time.

 

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.