Week 3_Melanie Manuel_ASA 114

Melanie Manuel

ASA 114 001

15 January 2020

Nina Glick Schiller’s “Lived Simultaneity and Discourses of Diasporic Differences” highlights the complexity of the migrant experience, whether by “[c]oncepts of assimilation versus diasporic identities, situational or multiple identities” because the relating factors cannot fully describe the migrant’s experiences (Schiller 159). This inability to categorize or label a migrant’s experience in a few words is due to the fact that migrants, much like any individual person, experience different things and carry themselves in different ways. There is no one true way to describe a person’s experience, let alone an Asian American or Asian migrants, because their motivations and/or reasons may not necessarily match up to someone else’s. Each person carries their own stories, burdens, and by trying to whittle it down to a simple turn is falling into dangerous territory. Arguably to subsume their experiences with what is expected migrant story is acting just as our aggressors and our oppressors. But that begs the question: how is it possible to acknowledge all these nuanced differences when we are simply trying to explain a basic phenomenon? How is it possible to appease everyone and their individual stories in this larger narrative of migration and diasporic difference? That is something I do not have an answer to, truthfully; I do not even know where to begin to acknowledge and try to convey the myriad of stories out there, but I think that’s where scholarship can play a role into making this kind of information accessible. There is research to be done and information to be shared, because obviously the interest is there; I think it’s just a matter of finding someone willing to do the work and share it, but also trying to find ways to make this available to just undergraduates but students and consumers overall. There needs to be a normalization of nuance and shared information rather than keeping this under wraps and secured for a select few, but that’s an argument for another day. 

I suggest the song, “Atypical” by Manila Killa, who is an artist from Manila that creates an airy and longing atmosphere with his beats, pairing it with lyrics about wanting to be understood.

Works Cited

Schiller, Nina Glick. “Lived Simultaneity and Discourses and Diasporic Difference.” Displacements and Diasporas: Asians in the Americas. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.