Identity and Craft
I'm a David Chang and All-Things-Fuku fanboy.
Something about Chang’s reverential irreverence draws me in.
He can speak with deep respect about a Michelin-starred chef who inspired him as a young man. And one second later tell you that he put the word "de-rish-ous" on his sandwich wrappers to shock consumers into confronting their stereotypes about Asian Americans.
This naturally led me to convince Magdalena to go to The New Yorker Festival last week to see him on a panel with other Asian American creative luminaries to talk about Identity and Craft.
The panelists included filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung (director of Minari), writer Min Jin Lee (author of Pachinko), and actor Sandra Oh (lead in Killing Eve). The panel was moderated by NewYorker.com editor Michael Luo.
So, Identity and Craft?
While each panelist had something to say that made their individual intersection of Identity and Craft unique to them, there was also a shared thread.
In the early parts of their journeys, when they were starting out and just learning, they had to take whatever work came their way in order to accrue experience. Being the "token Asian" actor in a scene, and its equivalents in kitchen-work, film-work and book-work.
But after gaining some degree of mastery in their crafts, they earned the right to choose what work they wanted to do for themselves.
And what do they choose?
To a person, they said their curiosity about their own Asian-ness, and in expressing it in their individual way, was a deep source of inspiration. That that puts them in pursuit of a higher truth and keeps them in a beginner’s mindset.
The discussion left me with new thoughts, particularly about identity.
Of course, identity is “who we are”. But that implies more than class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and so forth. It is more than who OTHERS think we are. It is who WE think we are. So while part of it is fixed in all of us, it is also interpretable. It is a never-ending wellspring for individual development.
The Identity and Craft panel at The New Yorker Festival was excellent. And, despite the outrageous ticket price, I felt rewarded and happy to have attended.
You an watch a replay of the panel or read more about the panelists, here:
