Rebuilding Narratives 亚洲人在巴西的故事

This year, the “Stop Asian Hate” movement began in response to the rising number of hate crimes against Asians triggered by the global pandemic. The movement helped shed light on how xenophobia and racism have always been part of the Asian immigrant experience in the West. The American narrative is predominant, or else the discourse is about what happens in Europe or other Anglo-Saxon countries. But little is ever said about what Asian immigrants and their descendants face in the developing world.

Unbeknownst to most, Brazil is home to many Asian diasporic communities. The largest of all is the Japanese, which, with over two million people, is the biggest ethnic Japanese community outside of Japan. They’re succeeded by the Chinese, with roughly 360,000, and Koreans, with about 50,000. South Asians, even though in a lesser number, have also made their way to Brazil in search of a better life.

To understand the Asian immigrant experience in Brazil and find out what it means to be Asian-Brazilian today, we talked to five artists whose families immigrated to the country from Japan, China, Taiwan, and India. They told us their families’ stories, their struggles growing up in Brazil as Asian descendants, and their experiences with the recent rise in xenophobia. Their narratives converge in many ways and are permeated by a common sentiment of ethnocultural confusion, invariably reflected in their artworks.

André Terayama, 31 

Through his work, illustrator and performative artist André Terayama explores the conundrum of his Japanese-Brazilian identity. In an ongoing series of black-and-white illustrations, he depicts São Paulo’s central district of Liberdade, locally known as “Japantown.”

Terayama’s great-grandparents immigrated to Brazil in the 1920s and 30s, escaping growing poverty and the rise of fascism in Japan. At the time, Brazil welcomed immigrants to work on coffee plantations. But Brazilian landowners, used to slave labor until then, offered only the harshest conditions. “It was traumatic for them,” Terayama says. “They were sent to a coffee plantation and became bonded laborers. As their debt increased, they had to escape during the night to start a new life all over again.”

Back then, the Brazilian elite deemed Japanese immigrants undesirable. They defended the national “whitening” of the population by promoting European migration instead. Things got worse with the eruption of the Second World War when the Japanese were considered enemies of the nation. “There were racist and pseudo-biological laws against Asians. My family had to distance themselves from their community to avoid being targeted. It was the idea of the ​​yellow peril—one still latent and very close to us today,” Terayama says.

Growing up, Terayama was an easy target for bullies who didn’t shy away from exploiting his looks in every offensive way imaginable for a kid. These were often public displays of humiliation in front of his school teachers—and not condemned by them. “My experience growing up as an Asian-Brazilian was extremely alienating and deprived me of any common sense of identity,” he says.

But he found refuge in Japanese mangas, animes, and live-action series—all broadcasted daily over children’s television programs in the 1990s—and in video games. “All these things were very familiar to me, but simultaneously very distant,” he says, adding that this early exposure to Japanese pop culture provided him with an uncanny feeling of satisfaction.

Later, while studying art at São Paulo State University, Terayama noticed the lack of Asian references and the overbearing bias toward European art, even when the former heavily influenced the latter, which is the case with impressionist paintings. “The juxtaposition between a Monet and a Hiroshige, for instance, rarely takes place,” he notes. “That shows the importance Brazilian scholars give to European culture.”

In the 1980s, with the Japanese economy thriving under American-style capitalism, things changed, and there was a shift in how Brazilian society perceived Japanese-Brazilians. They were suddenly seen as allies of the West, a model minority earning its place in society through hard work and dedication. But this shift is in itself problematic. “It implies an inferior position and the expectation of a particular behavior from Japanese descendants. Their presence is changed to fit a hegemonic and narcissistic view of things,” Terayama explains.

His illustrations of the Liberdade district reveal a juxtaposition of cultures, habits, and symbols. Liberdade is where many Japanese immigrants flocked in the early 1900s looking for affordable rent prices. As a cunning homage, the area is now adorned with traditional Japanese lanterns and even has storefront signs only in Japanese. But the area is also a conspicuous site for Afro-Brazilian history, as it housed an infamous square for the execution of runaway enslaved workers.

Liberdade is also central to other Asian communities in São Paulo. It’s an area where Chinese, Taiwanese, and Korean communities also gather for business and cultural festivities. To André, the series of illustrations represents the “coexistence of ghosts that haunt the individual imagination. But also how to imagine a possible future for these issues.”

Wendy Cao, 26

Textile artist Wendy Cao is the daughter of Chinese parents. Now based in Paris, she originally grew up in São Paulo, where she grew up afflicted by a constant feeling of estrangement. Her work, characterized by Chinese embroidery in contemporary style, derives from her quest to understand her Chinese roots.

Cao’s parents migrated to Brazil to start a new life following the cultural revolution. After they arrived, they found that fitting into Brazilian society and finding work was challenging. “My father often suffered xenophobic attacks when people saw him practicing qi gong,” Cao says. “As my mother studied to get into university, still learning Portuguese, her classmates thought it was ridiculous that a Chinese woman, married and with kids, would aspire to be a doctor.” But Cao says her parents overcame the obstacles in the end: her father became a famous qi gong master and acupuncturist, and her mother graduated from the school of medicine of São Paulo University, considered the best in Latin America.

Growing up, Cao herself faced prejudice for being different. She struggled to fit in by conforming to Western standards as much as she could. “I went through a long process of refusing my background because of all the negative implications. I found myself rejecting Chinese culture—as a result, I also disdained myself,” Cao says. But her efforts were in vain. “Every day, someone makes sure to tell you that you’re Chinese. Growing up as an Asian-Brazilian was to feel Brazilian, but to be constantly reminded that I’m not entitled to such sentiment.”

But eventually, Cao questioned her feelings, and she grew interested in understanding her parents’ lives before moving. In 2019, she spent four months in a rural village near Suzhou, learning Chinese silk embroidery techniques from a group of local artisans at the atelier of Lu Fuying.

Cao’s experience in China was a huge culture shock, but it also was an invaluable opportunity for her to connect with her cultural roots. “I felt emotional when I saw a group of people practicing tai chi in China,” she remembers. “And I cried for having denied my origins for so many years. It was a mixture of sadness and happiness. I knew that, from that moment on, I was more connected to my roots.”

Still, Cao’s sentiment of non-belonging continued in China, where she was always seen as a foreigner due to the way she dressed and acted. She then realized that being Asian-Brazilian is to have a split identity. “For years, I felt as if in a limbo, a person without a collective background, without identity,” she says. “Nowadays, with the surge of the decolonizing ideas, I’m trying to find where I belong without necessarily belonging.”

Singh Bean, 27

Multimedia artist and music producer Singh Bean is of Lebanese-Syrian and Indian descent. Her collage art offers a glimpse into both her subconscious and her experiences as a South Asian-Brazilian woman.

Singh’s great-grandparents on both sides were the ones who immigrated to Brazil. On her father’s side, they came from the Middle East, escaping the recurrent political turmoils in the region. On her mother’s side, her great-grandfather, a Sikh, left India during the Indian independence movement after being arrested alongside Gandhi for resisting British colonial rules. Once in Brazil, he chose not to display his cultural habits and rituals or even wear his turban in public. Since there was nowhere for Sikhs to assemble or worship, he saved his faith for the safety of his home.

When comparing the immigrant experience on both sides of her family, Singh thinks her father’s side might have had it easier. For one, Syrian and Lebanese immigrants went in large numbers to Brazil, even outnumbering the Japanese. But above all, there’s also the fact that these immigrants are often perceived as white. “There is white ‘passability’ for Arabs here,” she says, adding that many prominent Brazilian politicians who are of Arabic descent, including former presidents, are seen as “white” by the public at large. “On my mother’s side, because the Indian diaspora was not large, people didn’t understand my great-grandfather. Because his skin was dark, they considered him a “black person.”

As for her own experiences, “what affected me the most was being fetishized by men,” she says. This was what led her to create EXÓTICA, a collage series juxtaposing photos of herself and her family with screenshots from text messages she received from men. “They would call me ‘exotic’ or ‘mysterious,’ or else they would say something about my skin or ancestry. People still have this impression that the orient is something mystical and they take it to a sexual level—the Kama Sutra, right?” Interestingly, while working in this series, Singh began to question how much she also fetishizes herself. “Sometimes, in the quest for an identity, this happens,” she says.

Nowadays, one thing is clear: she doesn’t want to be labeled. Singh doesn’t mind being referred to as an Asian-Brazilian artist, but this should not be what validates her work. “We see a white artist only as an artist. He can talk about whatever he wants because he has space. A non-white artist is like a quota—they have to talk about their hurdles.”

Above all, Singh wants the freedom to express whatever she wants with her work, including trivial and ordinary feelings. “I am much more than just my ancestry. We’re all different human beings,” she says.

Caroline Ricca Lee, 31

Artist, curator, and researcher Caroline Ricca Lee, who goes by the pronoun “they,” investigates topics like Asian identities from Latin America, decolonial feminism, and the social construct of gender. Lee is particularly vocal about their ideas, taking part in multiple talks and debates. In 2017, they founded the first Asian feminist collective in Brazil, Lótus.

Like Terayama, their mother’s family migrated from Japan to work on coffee plantations. Their father’s family left China in the 1960s, migrating through Macao. “That’s how they discovered ‘this place called Brazil,’ which also shared the Portuguese colonial root,” Lee says.

Lee thinks it’s worth mentioning that the Chinese immigrants who arrived in Brazil from the mid-1800s onwards were seen as precarious workers, allowed only meager compensations for extenuating working hours. They alert that such stereotypical and orientalist views lingered until today. “The homogenization of all Asian ethnicities is a discriminatory construct that operates within a colonial and imperialist worldview. It stereotypes and suppresses different cultures, denying them the right to an identity,” they say.

In Brazil, such views now meet the cacophonous discourse of far-right President Bolsonaro, who proclaims himself a fierce anti-communist. “The anti-communist rhetoric—in other words, the racist, misogynist, and xenophobic rhetoric—has taken hold in our society too, and there has been an increase in physical violence against Asian-Brazilian communities, especially when they are Chinese.”

However, as an activist, Lee believes they also have to fight intolerance and racism surging within Asian communities and stop the myth of the “model minority” from being mistaken for something positive, as it sometimes is. Regarding the latter, besides denoting an inferior position to East Asians, as noted by Terayama, Lee reminds us that the term is inherently oppressive towards black, mixed race, and indigenous people. It positions Asians as a more desirable contingent by the white population, who are indisputably at the top of the social hierarchy.

To Lee, the acceptance of such a label by Asian descendants grants them class privileges, underlining their part in structural racism. In any case, this privilege is nothing but an illusion. As Lee explains, “recently, we can see how we quickly went from being a model minority to becoming the ‘Chinese virus.’ After all, the coronavirus has been racialized. In the end, the condition of East Asians remains fluctuating according to the wishes of the white supremacy.”

Lee firmly believes, “It is perfectly feasible that a new generation attempts to deconstruct the stereotypes placed on Asian narratives. A new formulation from our perspective is the revolution of our times,” she says.

Cyshimi, 23 

Viviane Lee, known as Cyshimi—a moniker combining “cyber” and “sashimi”—is also of Chinese descent and prefers the pronoun “they.” Their art reflects the cyber-realm and is permeated by ideas of identity, ancestry, and the body as a social entity.

Cyshimi’s father is from Taiwan; their mother was born in Mozambique, a country that shares the same colonial roots as Brazil and Macao. She’s ethnically Chinese, and because she already spoke Portuguese, she chose to immigrate to Brazil. “My mother would sometimes say she was well-received in Brazil. Other times, she would say people were suspicious of her, and she often had to omit where she was really from, and say instead she was from Taiwan, or merely Asian.” But Cyshimi knows their mother is from a generation that handled xenophobia and racism differently, never giving much importance to such matters.

As for their own experience, they’re pretty straightforward. “Growing up as a non-white child in Brazil makes you notice you’re different from a very young age. We feel alienated and suffer from self-hatred without really understanding who we are. Most of my traumas happened during my childhood or teen years. These are the years when you think it’s all your fault and that you’re alone in it,” they say.

Cyshimi found in Asian activism and art a way to let go of their silent traumas. In the 360-degree video performance Cosplay of Myself, they have a conversation about how their appearance continually defines them in the eyes of society. The piece was part of an immersive installation resembling a bedroom where visitors could lie on a bed and wear a VR headset to watch the video.

The idea of racial deconstruct is central to Cyshimi’s art. “Being an Asian-Brazilian artist is to take part in a de-colonial, non-normative, and non-hegemonic fight.” Like Lee, Cyshimi sees a need to break from the stereotypes and the “fictional identity created by the other,” that defines Asian-Brazilians. “We need to rework what we are beyond these issues,” she says. “Around the world, many people are rebuilding the narrative. In a way, we’re all connected.”

Besides Brazil, Asian immigrants have also landed in countries like Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, and Peru, to name a few. There, too, their stories are marked by racism and xenophobia. It’s only by listening to their voices and the voices of their descendants that we can have a fuller understanding of Asian diasporas in the West and of how much their experiences converge, how much they differ, and how they might contribute to rebuilding the narrative.

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Contributors: Tomas Pinheiro, Lucas Tinoco
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li