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http://exhibits.library.stonybrook.edu/WUA/files/original/e3b28ca5d3fd96f48cb1435cad5cf783.pdf
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PDF Text
Text
Trent Chen, Feng YingZong, Bae Chang Seong
Final Project
AAS-POL 307
Professor Christoff
SECTION ONE
Person interviewed: Nancy Wang
Interviewee’s title or position: Social Worker, Dancer, Storyteller
Date, time, and length of interview: April 13th, 2018, 04:00 PM EST, 00:00-34:10
Your objective in conducting this interview: To learn about the life and career of famous AsianAmerican social worker, dancer, and storyteller: Nancy Wang.
SECTION TWO
Conducting an interview on Wang was a bit easy and simpler. There are some of the
things we did before conducting this kind of interview on her. First, we had to do a research on
her life; the way she lives, her background and the mode of life she is used to. We expounded on
the internet research and the sources that are trusted and supplied from the base of her relation.
We found that Wang is a lady with respect since her tender age. She had been raised in a family
whose parents take mere responsibility and have a lot of work to do, apart from raising their kids.
We also found that the character of Wang is a bit more social and responsible. She is used
to taking responsibilities each and every time. The busy schedule of her parents makes her not
prone to living in a single environment for long-she keeps moving to different schools because
�her parents also keep shifting homes. The questions we had for her were connected to the kind of
work she wanted, since her background had a persuasive influence too.
The interview questions we prepared are below:
1:Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
2:How has being a woman affected your career?
3:What stories do you try to tell your audience?Do you think your performances are universally
relatable?
4:What do you think are the biggest cultural differences between China and the United States?
5:Who are your influences? What inspired you to start a career in the performing arts?
6:What title do you like the most, Storyteller, Dancer, or Playwright?
7:It says on your website’s mission statement that you want to “heal the divides between us”, do
you think there has been progress in bringing people together?
8:Additionally, your mission statement also says that you want to “reveal universal truths”. What
do you think some of these “truths” are?
9:We know you’re well-traveled, what Korean stories are you familiar and impressed with?
10:Do you think there should be more female storytellers?
SECTION THREE
1)
Due to the time limit of the interview, we didn’t finish all the questions we want to ask to
Nancy Wang; However, on the kind of response and answers we got from her, we had all
answers aligning to our research on her. She made clear points that showed that she was a true
person who could just lean on mere truth. All the questions we asked went answered and she
never hesitated even a bit. She made clear answers which came out exactly the same as the
research we had conducted on her earlier, so we can say Yes, we got complete answers to our
questions.
�2)
Our interview was structured because we came prepared with predetermined questions
that we asked Mrs. Wang to answer for us. However, once we asked our questions the interview
was relatively unstructured. Mrs. Wang even answered questions that we didn't get a chance to
formally ask in her responses to questions that we did get to ask. For instance, we wanted to
formally ask Mrs. Wang how she met her husband but she ended up telling us how she met him
in her response to the first question: “Could you tell us a little about yourself and you career?”
3)
We didn’t get a chance to ask probing questions but there were instances throughout the
interview where one of us made probing statements. During one section of the interview, Mrs.
Wang tells us about her experiences being a first generation Asian American and one of us
responds by saying “I’m third generation myself”. This let Mrs. Wang know that we’re listening
and also opened a path for further dialogue. Additionally, at a later point in the interview, Mrs.
Wang talks about a Korean folktale that contains the lesson to judge people individually. One of
us responds by saying, “the mission statement on your website says that you want to reveal
universal truths and that definitely seems like a universal truth: to judge people individually and
not as groups”. Mrs. Wang agrees with our interpretation of her mission statement and then
elaborates on it.
4)
The team approach during the interview was quite simple, because we asked only five
questions although we prepared about 10 questions. We divided 5 questions into three parts.
First, Trent Chen started interview with the question of introducing her and influence of being a
woman on her life and career. After that, YingZong Feng and ChangSeong Bae asked some
specific questions about her. YingZeong Feng asked the difference of culture between China and
USA. ChangSeong Bae asked about the Korean story that Mrs. Wang was familiar and
impressed with. Because there is no time to ask another specific questions after that, Trent Chen
�ended interview with the questions about her final goal of her career and appreciation. Because
interview was not so long and most of her talking was audible, we did not record interview by
hand but just record her voice with Skype.
5)
Unfortunately, she didn’t mention any article or document to us during the interview, but
she did mention her husband Kikuchi when she was talking about her career and working
inspiration. She works with her husband and created many kinetic stories. Many of the stories
they made focus on the topic of immigration history, Asian Traditional folktales and her own life
stories in this country. Nancy and her husband always use their great wisdom and life experience
to combine the music, dance, theater and the storytelling together to present for many Asian
communities in U.S and audience outside the U.S.
SECTION FOUR
00:49 / 34:10
Transcript Summary:
Interview with
Nancy Wang (Edited
for clarity)
00:49
Okay well you know I was born in New Orleans
00:56
Louisiana because my father had just
01:00
been promoted to Consul General he was
01:05
Vice Consul in Chicago and became a
01:07
Consul General for the country of China
01:11
at the time and stationed in New Orleans
01:16
and my mom was a nurse so they both
01:20
had similar values in terms of serving
01:23
the community and my father, as a
01:26
diplomat, was in charge of all the
01:27
Chinese Americans who lived in the south
01:30
and any needs they might have and so I
01:32
was kind of brought up in that kind of
01:35
value system,
01:38
and in philosophy, that one's life is
01:43
about serving others and then especially
01:55
(Inaudible)
02:00
with the communist takeover he did
02:05
not continue with the Kuomintang in
02:09
Taiwan and instead started work
02:12
in the United Nations representing China
02:14
but then he got his citizenship
02:19
and
02:22
moved to Chicago and in Chicago he
02:24
continued to do his civic service in
02:28
Chinatown, and so once again
02:32
it was about how you serve others and so it
02:36
became natural that when I was in
02:39
college I was going to be a nurse, then I
02:41
was going to be a medical technologist,
02:42
and then I finally
02:45
settled on psychology, and that's how I
02:48
�got my Masters in Social Work so
02:51
again, once again that was like, you
02:54
know, that's about serving others, but then
I
02:58
worked as a social worker for
03:00
many years but I always not-so03:03
secretly wanted to be a dancer so I
03:06
became a dancer and I finally found a
03:10
teacher out west
03:14
in San Francisco and she was my
03:18
mentor and taught me not only dance but
03:23
theater and choreography and staging
03:27
and I danced in her company and I taught
03:29
for her and so that continued until I
03:35
had a private practice in
03:37
psychotherapy and one of the things
03:41
I'm very proud of and still proud of
03:43
today is that I would do 10-week
03:45
sessions for Asian Americans so that
03:47
they can understand “the Western
03:49
perspective” versus “the eastern
03:51
perspective” and how important it was not
03:53
to see yourself through a Western
03:56
perspective or you would not think very
03:58
highly of yourself or your culture and
04:01
so that was really really important, I've
04:08
written articles, I do workshops, but
04:10
always the dance and theatre
04:13
called me and so that's how I met my
04:16
husband, he was the music director for
04:21
the Asian American theatre and then I
04:24
was a dancer in one of them it was
04:29
called “the Avocado Kid”
04:33
(Inaudible)
04:38
and then we were going to work
04:41
together, (Inaudible)
04:43
how we went from teaching and having the
04:49
first company and first school of
04:52
cooling tongue which is a (Inaudible)
04:54
of Southern Philippines which is
04:58
now a huge phenomena thanks to Robert
05:01
and myself for bringing that to
05:04
California and we, being the people
05:10
we are, community minded and naive at the
05:13
same time, someone wanted to be part of
05:17
our company and we unfortunately let her
05:19
do that against our own good feelings
05:21
and ended up stabbing us in the back and
05:26
taking away that organization but if it
05:29
weren't for that
05:30
we would not have created Ethnohtec
05:33
which has taken us very far in terms
05:36
of touring around the world, throughout
05:40
the country,
05:42
you know performing for Clinton's and
05:45
then Obama's inaugural celebrations and
05:49
it's been really an honor to do this
05:51
work because folktales have a built-in
05:57
value system that they teach, so it really
06:03
spoke to us in terms of not only the art
06:07
and the form that we created which is a
06:11
very stylized unique way of telling a
06:15
story, we use movement, and gesture, and
06:17
music, and the spoken word, but also it
06:20
had those values already in it, that
06:22
we could impart to
06:27
people that still need to know
06:29
about and learn about in terms of living
06:32
a good life again, and be at the same
06:37
time entertaining, so that became our big
06:43
way of performing for thousands of
06:46
people, so that's what we still
�06:50
do and now we've gone on to do
06:55
personal stories, I've written the story
06:57
of an atom bomb survivor and his
07:02
journey from revenge and hatred and rage
07:06
to forgiveness and reconciliation, I've
07:09
also written a story about my Chinese
07:11
mother that's called “Bittersweet”
07:15
and Peggy knows, she's interviewed
07:19
my mom, and my grandma,
07:21
and also the most recent one is a
07:25
piece called “Red Altar” which goes back
07:27
to 1850 when my first family members
07:32
came to this country on a junk boat, they
07:35
were just teenagers, they crashed into
07:37
Carmel Bay and started the fishing
07:39
industry there
07:42
and they passed San Francisco and
07:45
never got there and that's on my
07:49
mother's side, and
07:52
it's all through the women so that piece
07:56
is really about immigration and racism
07:59
and legal discrimination that was going
08:01
on in the late 1800s and 1900s and how
08:07
the Chinese had to leave early and did
08:12
successfully reinvent themselves each
08:15
time a new law was passed such as the
08:18
“Chinese cannot fish during the day” and
08:20
the “Chinese cannot fish offshore”, no more
08:24
drying fish so that it kept constantly
08:27
trying to make the Chinese
08:33
leave to Asia, and we didn't leave, so
08:38
that's why I'm still here today, I'm here
08:40
today because we succeeded, it was, you
08:44
know, pretty horrible but still we
08:46
succeeded, and that's how it happened,
08:54
generations in our family in America
09:04
(Inaudible)
09:10
me neither, it's really bad
09:41
well, you know, I think we're gonna dance,
09:49
I mean, in a dance company it'll be
09:52
mostly women it's hard to get men so I
09:56
don't think actually being a woman has
09:58
made too much of a problem, same with
10:01
social work, mostly at the time it was
10:04
women there were few men and you know
10:06
not that I ever wanted to run a
10:07
department but it would always be the
10:09
men who were hired to to be the
10:12
department head and not women but
10:15
that didn't affect me because I never
10:17
wanted to be you know doing that, I think
10:21
women were
10:25
there I never had a hard time and then,
10:31
let me think, in psychotherapy it's the
10:36
same thing, it's a lot of female
10:38
therapists and also at the time there
10:41
were very few Asian therapists so I
10:46
didn't have a hard time with that,
10:48
I also, let me think
10:53
I will say that as we have been doing
10:59
storytelling since 1987
11:03
we pretty quickly became
11:05
nationally known storytellers and yet I
11:09
can walk down the street at a festival
11:11
where everyone, you know,
11:14
knows each other sort of you know and
11:16
and we're on the stage but they
11:19
don't know me unless I'm with my husband
11:23
so I don't know if he’s more
11:28
recognizable or what, but you know it
11:35
really has an effect, I mean I'll pick it
�11:36
up when they say Robert and his wife
11:38
rather than Nancy and her husband but I
11:45
think the only way that it has
11:52
affected me is that,
11:57
I don't know if this is because
11:58
I'm chinese-american, and a
12:02
minority (Inaudible)
12:06
or because I'm
12:10
a female that I wasn't always the first
12:15
to speak up or even if something
12:17
happened I wasn't the one to speak up, I
12:20
always held myself back but
12:23
I think that's a female thing, but
12:26
it's also probably an Asian thing
12:28
because we're more of a collective
12:30
orientation, so there are ways that we
12:34
kind of check with each other to see who
12:36
wants to talk, rather
12:38
than the European American way which is
12:41
to just immediately raise your hand
12:43
because you know you're right to do that
12:45
and usually first you
12:47
know, they're the first out the door and
12:49
first in the door, you know I don't
12:54
know because it's what they call whether
12:56
it's a new word now where you,
13:00
I can't think of the name when you're
13:03
(Inaudible)
13:04
trans something-or-other
13:06
you know crossover, you know is it..
13:09
because there's stuff that goes
13:11
on as a female, there’s stuff that goes on
as
13:14
a minority, just as an ethnic group of
13:17
color, and then there's ageism,
13:20
and like all these
13:22
ways that they criss cross each other
13:24
and you don't know which is
13:28
affecting what.. thank you, yes.. that's the
13:34
word, so I don't know if it’s just being a
13:39
female because my mother was pretty
13:41
outspoken, it used to embarrass the hell
13:42
out of us when we were young but I
13:46
do that myself now and my daughter's
13:51
learning to do, I don't know, you know
13:55
Japanese are more implosive and Chinese are
13:57
more explosive so here we are in San
14:02
Francisco if I was living maybe in
14:05
Kansas City or I was still in New
14:08
Orleans or if I lived in Florida or
14:10
Nebraska it would be very different
14:14
because in San Francisco, the people of
14:17
color are the majority, so it really
14:21
makes a difference in terms of how
14:26
comfortable we become because everywhere
14:29
we look we're there,
14:32
which is very different growing up in
14:34
New Orleans, in Chicago, and then going to
14:36
college and graduate school in Wisconsin
14:41
but it was definitely something that I
14:44
had to learn having come from New
14:49
Orleans, Chicago,
14:50
Wisconsin, once I got here I learned to be
14:55
comfortable in my skin as a person of
14:57
color, instead of wanting to be white
15:00
like everyone else so I don't know so
15:04
much of being a female, I mean being a
15:07
second daughter did make a difference,
15:10
my sister was much more you know I was
15:13
always my sister's younger sister my
15:15
brothers younger sister so
15:18
�so you know it's hard to
15:20
say sibling position, gender, ethnic
15:27
group, age...
15:52
Yes, you want to know what
15:58
the difference is?
15:59
Oh, huge difference,
16:04
China (Inaudible)
16:06
for so long was not open to the rest
16:11
of the world so you've got to maintain
16:13
and contain your beautiful philosophy
16:17
and your cultural behaviors and you
16:23
know respecting elders
16:26
although the Revolution kind of
16:30
did that one so the difference is here I
16:35
think in China the
16:38
Chinese are more comfortable in their
16:40
own skin
16:41
here the Chinese were not
16:43
comfortable in their own skin, and it
16:47
still goes on today because even the
16:50
young people coming up they have the
16:52
same issues as I did when I was young
16:55
and that was decades ago they
16:59
still have the issue of not feeling
17:04
they are being heard or that people
17:09
keep coming up to them and asking them
17:11
“where are you from?”
17:13
I mean I heard that, “oh, your
17:15
English is so good” I never could
17:18
understand that because it was the only
17:19
language I knew, and I was born here but
17:21
they didn't (Inaudible)
17:24
to hell
17:24
you know European Americans just assumed
17:27
that you are from another country
17:30
that we're not Americans so we always
17:32
feel like we are outside of the
17:36
mainstream whereas in China you are the
17:40
mainstream, so I think you're more
17:43
comfortable in your skin and you have
17:45
issues about other things
17:48
but in America we have our own issues,
17:50
I think the other thing
17:56
is that Chinese
17:58
and I think it probably goes for
18:00
Japanese and Koreans and everyone, that
18:03
you don't realize how much you are still
18:05
of your ethnic culture because you no
18:09
longer have context for it, or words for
18:12
it, I get so lost in translation I mean
18:16
as it goes down from generation to
18:17
generation we lose what it's all about,
18:22
so for example, my parents would
18:25
always say “oh you know no she's not
18:29
smart, she
18:32
could be better, like she should be more..”
18:34
like, shut up.
18:35
and I know that happens in
18:38
China but it still happens here but we
18:40
don't understand it because we hear our
18:43
counterparts in the European culture
18:46
saying about their children and
18:49
how wonderful they are, they do this and
18:51
they do that at all ages, so what about
18:53
you, so cute and we never heard that
18:56
and there's a reason for that, there's a
18:59
cultural reason for that, but even my
19:02
mother probably didn't know it as a
19:04
fourth generation, maybe my grandma knew
19:08
as a third generation but I don't know
19:10
that for sure,
19:12
�but maybe more so because she doesn't
19:15
even know English that well she still
19:18
lived in her little fishing village and
19:20
then in San Francisco Chinatown all her
19:22
life so the culture was still intact,
19:27
I think once we're here for many
19:30
generations that whole comparison that
19:36
you can't help make about who you are,
19:38
about how they are, and how they're
19:43
so much more confident that we
19:46
seem so much (inaudible) but it's not
19:48
because
19:52
that we’re less than them, although we will
19:54
interpret it that way because we have a
19:57
Western perspective, oh she says
19:59
she's stupid, she doesn't know what to
20:05
say but really it's because we've been
20:07
brought up not to speak out,
20:11
in Japanese
20:16
there's a saying that “the nail that
20:18
sticks up is the one that gets pounded
20:20
down” so we were taught that in a
20:23
collective you don't try and make
20:24
yourself better, it doesn't mean you
20:26
aren't competitive, but there's a
20:29
humility about it that's not in the
20:32
European American culture, humility does
20:35
not exist that way so it's very easy to
20:38
start looking down at yourself,
20:41
whereas in China that wouldn't happen so
20:44
we still have our own culture but we
20:48
have no name for it unless you
20:50
study about it
20:53
but, you know I think that's
20:57
what you mean in terms of
20:58
what it is to be Asian
21:02
and Chinese in America versus Chinese in
21:04
China (Inaudible)
21:41
one of our very first stories from
21:44
Korea was called: “the man who
21:47
planted onions”, I don't know if you've
21:49
heard it before,
22:03
that's one of my favorite ones, it's
22:05
about a time and a place when people did
22:10
not see people as people but people saw
22:12
people as cows and so people would get
22:17
confused and asked “is this a
22:19
person or a cow” and so sometimes they
22:21
would end up eating each other,
22:25
do you know that story, it's a
22:37
Buddhist story but what happened was
22:41
this one man ended up eating his own
22:43
brother and so he was so upset that he
22:46
decided to travel around the country
22:48
looking for a cure, but no matter
22:52
where he went people still saw people as
22:54
cows and not people as people,
22:56
until one day he met
22:59
an old man
23:00
and asked the old man
23:04
“where are you from” and “where are you
23:05
going” and he realized “huh, you see me as
23:07
a man?” and so he said “well of course”
23:11
and he said “well how did you do that?”
23:14
(Inaudible)
23:16
and that was before we discovered a
23:20
wonderful treat with onions, he asked,
23:21
"what are
23:26
onions?”, so the woman explained to him
23:30
what onions are and he takes the seeds back
23:32
home, he plants them and he goes to tell
23:35
�all his old friends who good news but
23:36
they still saw him as a
23:39
cow so we ended up eating those
23:40
accountable, then after a while I
23:43
realized what the old (Inaudible)
23:45
another they know his harvest come up
23:47
they began to eat onions and from that
23:49
point on people now see people as people,
23:54
so that's an origin which is sort from
23:58
Korea, yeah they think well because we do
24:11
it a little bit with humor,
24:13
you know the point is that,
24:17
I think the end goes, no matter what
24:26
always eat your meat so now
24:32
people see people as people and cows are
24:35
stir fried with onions but Bill
24:41
do not take this for granted so there
24:44
are some people who still see people as
24:46
just a piece of piece of meat,
24:48
so you know it's what we've taken and
24:51
made the message in the story, “not
24:57
to see people as just a piece
24:59
of meat” and don't treat people like
25:01
they're just a piece of meat, that you
25:04
know that we are people of heart and
25:11
soul and value, and be kind to each other,
25:15
people like the journey at first
25:19
they're a little like, “what? you're
25:21
telling children about eating people?” but
25:24
by the end it's fine, and actually kids
25:27
love it,
25:29
teachers
25:32
get it at the end, so you know
25:59
folk tales have that already, but
26:02
you have to sometimes read a folk
26:04
tale that's been written by missionaries,
26:05
but thank goodness they did do it
26:08
because it might have been lost by now,
26:10
but still they are doing it from their
26:12
perspective a lot of times you have to
26:13
read several of the same one and then
26:16
try and make sure that you get the
26:20
essence of it and then you find the
26:22
message, and so yeah
26:25
so we do that with all our folktales and
26:28
find really wonderful ways of imparting
26:32
messages that are universal,
26:58
I've written the story, the
27:04
red altar of my, you know the fishing
27:08
villages in Monterey
27:09
started in 1850, so I've written a book,
27:12
there's one chapter that I want to
27:13
insert a small still doing that about,
27:16
what was going on in China that there
27:19
were so many people willing to leave and
27:23
it was you know there was a plague, and
27:25
there was a drought, and famine, and
27:29
Taiping rebels and so I
27:32
wanted to get some context to that but
27:35
yeah I want to finish that book, I want
27:36
it to be in all the schools,
27:39
I want it to even become a movie,
27:41
I just need our history to be
27:44
out there, that we've been here in this
27:47
country a long time, and it's a bad time,
27:50
you see me as an American, and so I want
27:54
that done, and I just got a grant to do
27:56
my grandfather's story which is another
27:58
story of how this man comes over from
28:01
China at age 12 and he becomes this
28:05
amazing kingpin of very high-class,
28:11
�Chinese restaurants in Chicago
28:14
catered to the European American
28:18
carriage trade, he died a very
28:21
mysterious death, he fell down his own
28:23
elevator shaft and people think maybe he
28:26
was pushed, (Inaudible)
28:28
and who knows what wasn't
28:31
happening,
28:31
so I'm gonna be doing that story and
28:36
maybe that'll be when I stop, well I have
28:41
to then perform it so yeah so there are
28:45
always things, make sure that all
28:47
our focus should be children's books so
28:50
that might be something that
28:54
once we don't perform them
28:56
there's not much that we can really
28:58
concentrate on, and really you
29:12
should see, it's very telling you
29:15
you can't come to it unless you're 8
29:17
years and older so it's mostly adults
29:19
and adults absolutely still love these
29:23
folktales because they're really not
29:25
just for children,
29:29
is the children love but it's the deeper
29:31
messages and the metaphors that the
29:33
adults get that have much more meaning
29:38
you turn
29:51
on television it's really pretty
29:53
disgusting,
30:01
it's really sad, yeah, we do this one
30:05
piece that’s called “monkey moon” and
30:07
it's about following our
30:10
“following foolish leaders” and we used to
do
Notes:
30:14
it for Bush now we definitely do it for
30:19
Mr. Trump, yeah we'll probably be
30:28
doing a lot next as we have
30:34
a mayor mayoral election in November,
30:38
one we have new Congresspeople, oh
30:43
don't follow foolish leaders, vote,
30:51
this is exciting that you got guys are
30:53
there talking to females about how
30:57
it is to be a female,
31:09
(Inaudible)
31:24
yeah what are you gonna do with that?, are
31:27
you all going to be teaching
31:29
Asian-American Studies? Because
32:01
women still make less than men at the
32:03
same job and in China they abandoned
32:08
all their little girls, that's still
32:12
happening and
32:15
the girls are
32:16
always much less appreciated in Chinese
32:19
families,
32:26
but my mother was a second daughter so
32:28
she made sure I didn't become a typical
32:34
second daughter, there's still a stigma
32:40
in many cultures
32:43
which I could
32:47
never understand because without us how
32:48
could you have your son?
33:14
Thank you, yes,
33:36
definitely will always always be our
33:40
mission,
33:49
yep, have a good weekend. Thank-you, bye.
/END
�Tell us a little about yourself and your career?
· Born: New Orleans, Louisiana
· Father – Chinese diplomat – instilled values of serving others
· In College, going to be a nurse, natural part off serving others, master’s in social work
· Secretly wanted to be a dancer
· Mentor in San Francisco taught her dance, led to a private practice in psychotherapy. put
aside some time to work on Chinese cultural perspectives.
· Husband was a director of an Asian American theater. Started working together. Eventually
created Ethnohtec.
· Folktales have built-in values. Good source of storytelling and at the same time entertaining.
· When Mrs. Wang talked about her experiences as a second generation Asian American, I
reaffirmed that I could relate by telling her that I was third generation Asian American.
How has being a woman affected your career and how has that played a role in how you
have performed and written your plays? · Being a woman hasn’t made too much of a problem. Mentions how head department positions
usually go to men. “Never had a hard time”
· A lot of female therapists but few Asian therapists.~dhkt
· Nationally known, but most people don’t recognize her unless she’s with her husband. 11:43
“Robert and his Wife, rather than Nancy and her husband”.
· Only way it has affected her: She wasn’t always the first to speak up about things. Always
held herself back. Possibly a female and Asian thing. Stems from the collective values of Asian
cultures opposed to European/American individualistic values. Talks about intersectionality but
couldn’t think of the word until one of us mentioned it. Considers this a big part of her
experiences. Living in a majority POC city (San Fran) has probably played a part in how she has
experienced living as a female poc.
What do you think are the biggest cultural differences between China and the United
States? - Feng
· In China, the Chinese are more comfortable in their own skin compared to ChineseAmericans. Here, they get questions like “where are you from?”, “your English is so good”,
17:00. It’s still assumed that Asians aren’t American. Also, in America, Asians aren’t the
mainstream. Europeans brag about their children Whereas Asians don’t. This is because Asians
are brought up “not to speak out”, taught in a collective you don’t want to be better than others,
“humility about it”. Not as prevalent in European cultures.
What Korean stories are you familiar and impressed with? - Bae
�· “the man who planted onions” – about a time and place when people didn’t see people as
people but people as cows. Buddhist story. Judge people as individuals not as pieces of meat.
“That definitely seems to be a lesson that you allude to on your website, you talk about
your mission statement and how you want to explore universal truths, that definitely seems
like a universal truth: to judge people individually and not groups, like you said.”
We appreciate your time talking to us, Mrs. Wang, one last question, as far as your career
goes are there still things that you want to complete, stories you still want to tell, plays you
still want to write?
· Yes, a story about what was going on in China that made people want to leave in the 1950s.
Wants it to be in schools, become a movie. “There’s always things”. Adults still love folktales.
Adults get the deeper messages.
· And once again they reveal universal truths that need to be revealed every once in a while.
· Definitely, “you turn on the tv and it’s really sad”. We can’t follow foolish leaders *alludes to
Trump* “Vote”. This is exciting that you have guys in a class around women” “Are you guys
gonna be teaching Asian American studies?”
· It’s been 33 minutes, we appreciate the time, Professor Christoff appreciates it, I hope you
continue trying to “heal the divides between us”. You have a good weekend, bye.
SECTION 5
Interviewing her, one of the interesting aspects was that being a woman did not affect
her life unlike anticipation. In the interview, she said that “I do not think actually being a woman
has made too much of a problem neither in a dance company nor in a social work.” This is
because in a dance company, most of the members were women and it was hard to get men.
When it comes to social work, although most of the department heads were men, Nancy Wang
said that it did not affect her because she did not want to do that. Also, when she worked as
psychotherapist, she did not have any disadvantage by the reason of being a woman, because
there was a lot of female therapist at that time. Only way she was affected by her gender was that
people do not know her unless she is with her husband. Mrs. Wang said that she held herself
back and that it may be a female thing. But overall, it seemed that being a woman did not have
�an influence on her life. So, it was interesting aspect but it was not useful to figure out U.S
women and Asian relations through her.
Another interesting aspect was that she paid attention to human-centered issues as a
storyteller. In the interview, she said that Folktales have a built-in value system that they teach,
so it is good resource of storytelling and at the same time of entertaining. Mrs. Wang said that
she wanted people to learn about living a good life through the stories. Also, we asked her about
Korean stories that she was the most impressed by, because we found that Ethnotec has an
exploring program to Korea and China to learn about their folktales. The Korean folktale she
impressed by was about a person who planted onions. The story is that once upon a time, in a
village, people saw people as a cow so they ate each other. One man in this country who ended
up eating his brother was so upset that he decided to leave his village. Traveling around the
country, he found a village where people saw each other as people, so he asked an old man in
this village how they did not eat each other. The old man said that onion made them see each
other as people. So, the man brought onion to his village and made people harvest it. Even
though he ended up being eaten by other people, after eating onion, people start to see each other
as people, not cow. Mrs. Wang said that this story can be inappropriate for kids because it
included cannibalism, but she was impressed by this story. This is because this story had a
message that people should not see each other as a piece of meat, that is, a method for something
but see each other as people themselves. Considering these aspect, we were able to find that she
focused on human-centered stories and well-being life.
She told us a lot of things within just thirty minutes including her life, her career, her life
as a female, and her final goal. Her story was very interesting, so there were little things to ask
more about her. But if choosing just one thing we wanted to ask was her thinking about the
�difference between western and east folktales. Because western and eastern culture has a lot of
differences, so their folktales also have some differences.
When it comes to other groups’ presentation, the most interesting presentation was about
Elaine H Kim. According to EunJeong’s group, she was born in New York in 1942 and she was
Korean American. The interesting and useful aspect of her was that Chinese and Japanese who
she met in California and Hawaii were protesting the United States in Korean War. This is
because U.S had a big bomb that can kill most of the population of Busan, the second biggest
Korean city, and Philippines in Korean War. The reason why this was interesting was that Asian,
especially Korean usually focus on their situation in Korean War, so most of Korean do not
know that there was protests against Korean War in U.S. Moreover, it was interesting that
Japanese and Chinese in U.S also protested against Korean War.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Women in US-Asian Relations Student Oral History Project
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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aas_2018_20180413_nwang_doc_dis
Format
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application/pdf
Creator
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Chen, Trent
YingZong, Feng
Chang Seong, Bae
Wang, Nancy
Title
A name given to the resource
Nancy Wang
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-04-13
Type
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text
Description
An account of the resource
Every fall, students at Stony Brook University in class, AAS/POL 307 (Women in US-Asian Relations), set out to interview women who are committed to enhancing US-Asian relations. Women’s contributions occur at many different levels of society and encompass a variety of occupations. In conducting oral history interviews, students prepare documentation for the Stony Brook University Melville Library’s digital collection and, in the process, acquire deep knowledge about women’s social, cultural, political, and economic roles in the United States and Asia, which includes those in Asian American communities. Each interview consists of multiple files, including: a text document and Powerpoint slides, which were converted to PDFs for this digitization project. The project is a joint effort between the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies and the University Libraries.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Asian Americans--Study and teaching
Women social reformers--Asia
Women social reformers--United States
Oral history
Rights
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In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted (URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/).
Contributor
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Christoff, Peggy Spitzer -- Senior Lecturer, China Studies. Director of Undergraduate Programs: Asian And Asian American Studies.
Relation
A related resource
AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject
AAS_POL_307_OralHistoryProject_2017