Chinese-ness - by Wing Young Huie (Hardcover)

About the Book

Reframing the conversations around race and identity, a talented photographer offers a prism through which to explore our modern era of cultural uncertainty.

Book Synopsis

Is Chinese identity personal, national, cultural, political? Does it migrate, become malleable or transmuted? What is authentic, sacred, kitsch? Using documentary and conceptual photographic strategies, acclaimed photographer Wing Young Huie explores the meaning of Chinese-ness in his home state of Minnesota, throughout the United States, and in China.

Huie, the youngest of six children and the only one born in the United States, grew up in Duluth, Minnesota, where images of pop culture fed, formed, and confused him. At times his own parents seemed foreign and exotic. His visit to China in 2010 compounded the confusion: his American-ness made him as visible there as his Chinese-ness did in Minnesota.

To make sense of his experiences, Huie photographed and interviewed people of Chinese descent and those influenced by Chinese-ness. Their multifaceted perspectives project humor and irony, as well as cultural guilt and uncertainty. In a series of diptychs, Huie wears the clothes of Chinese men whose lives he could have lived, blurring the boundary between photographer and subject.

How does Chinese-ness collide with American-ness? And who gets to define those hyphenated abstract nouns? Part meta-memoir and part actual memoir, Chinese-ness reframes today's conversations about race and identity.

Review Quotes

"The stories we tell about ourselves are the persons we become. These narratives form our identities, and identity is malleable. Wing Young Huie is an exceptional artist, and anything he puts his heart, mind, and hands to is sure to be amazing. His latest work, Chinese-ness, is a gift not only to those of us of Chinese ancestry, but to anyone interested in finding new and expanded ways of re-creating ourselves and understanding others." Leslie Li, author of Daughter of Heaven: A Memoir with Earthly Recipes
"Wing Young Huie is as perceptive with his words as he is with his images. Chinese-ness is an essential document for exploring cultural identity in the twenty-first century. Herb Tam, Curator and Director of Exhibitions, Museum of Chinese in America
"This collection of words and pictures is authentic, compelling, and unique. China and America are the two great powers of our era. Ever the twain shall meet. Here is how. Anyone curious about this collision of cultures will see they can blend together." Frank H. Wu, author of Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White
The McKnight Foundation selected Wing Young Huie as the recipient of the 2018 McKnight Distinguished Artist Award.
"In this project, Huie turns the camera on himself for the first time. It was inspired by a 2010 visit to China, where he really felt the clash of cultures. He took it upon himself to investigate, exchanging clothes with a few Chinese men and imagining the life he might have lived if his parents hadn't left China.
'My American-ness, or non-Chinese-ness, seemed evident to all, not just in language, but also in my gait, attitude, dress, mannerisms, ' he writes in the book. Yet in America, he also felt an otherness, which is how he discovered his 'Chinese-ness, ' as he refers to it. 'My Minnesota-ness overwhelmed my Chinese-ness to the point that my own parents often seemed exotic and foreign to me.'
The book also includes stories and photographs of other Chinese-Americans living in Minnesota, and Chinese people he met in China." Star Tribune