There are not that many Asian American writers out there.  And still fewer Asian American writers penning mysteries.  So, you’re probably wondering:  “brother Khanh, what’s with all this hating?”  Why would anybody create a list predicated on the idea of hate?  And why hate on a minority within a minority?  Isn’t that just mean-spirited and unproductive and tearing-us-down?

Well, I’ve got my response aimed right at you, like a rock in a slingshot.  Short answer:  there’s productive and nonproductive hate.

Long answer:  If you don’t know what you despise, abhor, can’t-stand, then you won’t develop an aesthetic compass.  I used to teach Creative Writing students on the college level at a pretty exclusive school.  It is often touted as the richest school in the country.  And it is pretty highly ranked.  The majority of the students are drawn from polite society and that means that they have learned that hate is a bad emotion.  In their suburban worlds, hatred is meant to be sublimated or repressed.  I kid you not:  half the campus is vegan.

This meant that they were disinclined to express strong emotions of any sort and their fiction suffers for it:  it becomes characterless.   Hatred can be a useful tool.  This doesn’t mean that I want to kick the ass of the few Asian American writers out there.  Neither do I want to burn a cross—literal or figurative—in front of their house of fiction.  I read them.  I need them.  They are my lifeboats and role models.  If I ever met one, I would offer to buy the first round of drinks…and the second…and the third, actually.  I’m pretty much a fanboy at heart.

I’m a relatively new writer of mysteries and so have never developed the kind of systematic hate that will translate into a refined aesthetic sense.  In other words, I have yet to follow the advice I give my own students.  So, here is my list of god-awful, poop-in-my-pants things I hate in Asian American mysteries.  Follow me on this journey to self-discovery:

1)                     Ethnic Enclaves:  I hate Chinatowns and Pilipinotowns and J-towns and K-towns.  Little Saigons and Little Indias—these places are belittling:  the world of the postage stamp.  I know they exist but I will never write about those zones as the exclusive world of my detective.  It smacks of segregation.  It’s just not me.  Okay, maybe I’ll do it for a third or fourth mystery—I’m such a backpeddler.

2)                     Dragon Ladies:  God, my little sister moved to the Midwest to work at a company.  She was a ballbuster and people started calling her a dragon lady.  She owned it.  Posted a comic strip with a dragon lady in one of those Chinese dresses with a high slit and the mandarin collar on her door.  It was framed as a joke.  But she didn’t like it.  It was a joke that was no joke at all:  the worst kind of joke.

3)                     Gangs:  Tongs or triads or yakuzas—whatever you wanna call them–are gross.  I know I have an open market with those Vietnamese gangs.  People love criminality.  If there is one way we Vietnamese have distinguished ourselves, it has been through gang violence…but I just don’t like all that pinky-cutting!  Funny thing:  I’m totally interested in human smuggling, which makes this kind of a conflict of interest.

4)                     Educating the public:  Public service announcements suck!  I’m not really there to teach you how chopsticks work.  It’s just gonna ruin my own meal!

5)                     Overcompensating Angry Asian Characters:  The Angry Asian Male bit—I get it.  I got a bit in me, too.  But there’s a website for that:  Angry Asian Man.  I visit it, so I can get my fill of rage.  Then, I get back to normal.

6)                     Cultural Tours:  I had a Vietnamese friend who took his white friend to Vietnam.  He spent the entire time translating.  It ruined the magic of the experience.  If my detective knocks on a door and sees some Red and Gold squares on it and then a girl answers—all in white—guess what?  You’re shit out of luck:  figure it out on your own (maybe I’ll give you a clue, though).

7)                     Italics:  Italics are the sign of the perpetually foreign.  They pander.  They’re cheap.  They’re lazy.  Readers love italicized foreign words because it allows a sense of interiority.  “I’m an insider now!”  But since when does learning a few phrases make you an insider?  Only dillholes think that!

8)                     Incense and Gongs:  All the paraphernalia of orientalism does not belong in my stories—except poison dart guns.  I love poison dart guns.

9)                     Sexy Stripper Asian Girls:  I love the Sexy Stripper Asian Girl as much as the next guy. A girls gotta eat, right?  I even love her better when she’s a Ph.D. student working at a hostess bar in order to support her expensive coke habit.  Okay, I was leading up to a thorough trashing of this terrible, terrible convention.  But actually, this is sounding pretty good.  So, it’s decided:  Sexy Stripper Girls are fine by me!

10)                 Pidgin:  Pidgin should never be spoken; it should be eaten.  ‘Nuff said!