Constellations of Power, Constellations of Hope

Constellations of Power, Constellations of Hope Jane Naomi Iwamura (bio) In 1992, I accepted Rita Nakashima Brock's invitation to participate on what would be deemed the first panel at the American Academy of Religion on Asian American women's theology. I was extremely honored by the invitation. At the time, I was a young master's student at Harvard Divinity School. The [End Page 131] session was in a large room, filled to capacity. Rita was undoubtedly a draw, as was María Isasi-Díaz, our respondent—two prominent feminist theologians. I approached the podium and faced a sea of faces interested in hearing about this new theological formation. Somewhat overwhelmed, I kept my wits by reading my paper to the microphone instead of the audience. The title of my presentation, "Drowning in My Own Language: Asian American Women's Survival amidst a Multiplicity of Voices," proved ironic given that I was barely audible. As years passed, I would find my voice, however, and seize the right both to speak and simply to be. Jump ahead almost twenty-five years to the present moment. I now teach at a small Buddhist-founded university in the San Gabriel Valley, home to one of the largest Asian American populations in the United States. One of my students, Venerable Tami, a poised and well-spoken Vietnamese American Buddhist nun, is clear in her aim to educate the youth in her temple in Buddhist practice and thought. Venerable Tami migrated to the United States when she was young, was educated in American institutions, and chose to become a Buddhist nun after she finished college. In a confident, caring, and insightful manner, she shares her thoughts on Buddhist meditation and presents her work on the religious education of children gleaned from Buddhist canonical sources. Venerable Tami and I are a study in contrasts. Guided by a compassionate master and surrounded by a strong Vietnamese American community, Venerable Tami found her spiritual life path at a much earlier age than I. (Mine was a more circuitous journey through various Christian denominations and eventually back to my Jodo Shin Buddhist roots.) Venerable Tami is self-possessed and balanced in a way that took me years to even imagine, much less accomplish. While I could barely discern my own theological voice at her age, she utters words that are finely tuned. Venerable Tami and I also more broadly represent the shifts in the Asian American population in the United States and in popular perceptions of Asian religions and culture. Asian American immigration can be divided into roughly two waves: pre-1965 and post-1965. These two periods are distinguished by a marked difference in demographics and environment of reception. My grandparents traveled to the United States as part of a stream of low-wage Asian laborers at the beginning of the twentieth century. Venerable Tami is part of the post-1965 wave. The 1965 Immigration Act allowed for an unprecedented number of Asians from China, Taiwan, the Philippines, South Asia, and Korea to move and settle in the United States. The Refugee Act also prompted the resettlement of Vietnamese and other Southeast Asians in the 1970s. These key pieces of legislation and subsequent acts greatly increased the number of Asian Americans and made for a critical increase in the Asian population that was heterogeneous in terms of national origin, socioeconomic status, and cultural and religious background. In 2011, Asian Americans accounted for 5.8 percent of [End Page 132] the American population and are proportionately the fastest growing racial-ethnic group in the United States The environment in which Asian migrants find themselves when they arrive is important. My grandparents were greeted by blatant discrimination, general suspicion, and lack of understanding of their "foreign" ways. This unwelcoming environment was fueled by unwarranted fears of "yellow peril" and miscegenation and resulted in a series of anti-immigration laws in the 1920s that would drastically curb Asian migration until the 1960s. Christian supremacy also was a dominant force as Asians were popularly viewed as "heathen Chinese" in need of moral uplift and religious conversion. As the United States emerged as a world power after the Second World War...