Hyper-Identification in Twilight

A really interesting moment in the printed Twilight, which didn’t make it into the film version, is the monologue of the Reverend Tom Choi, a Chinese-American minister from Westwood Presbyterian Church (his section starts on page 201). He describes remembering “very distinctly” how he decided “to wear my clerical collar” when he went to help with riot cleanup work one Saturday (201). He comments that, under usual circumstances, his collar was an irritating form of identification on the street, since “people call me ‘Father,’ / all this kind of stuff, / and I didn’t like that identification” (201). On the cleanup day, however, the identification became useful, even necessary. He put it on “because I was afraid that somebody / would mistake me for a Korean shop owner / and…and, um, either berate me physically or beat me up. / So I remember hiding behind his collar for protection.” (201). He also mentions that because people were upset “that Korean-Americans didn’t patronize black businesses / …I made sure that I went to black businesses for lunch / and whatnot, wearing my collar and waiting around for food” (202).

When I read this passage, it reminded me of the “I am Chinese” buttons worn during World War II, (which John Okada mentions in No-No Boy [x]), which prevented Asian Americans from being attacked by racists who took them (mistakenly or otherwise) for Japanese. I am a “good” Asian-looking-person, the buttons essentially said. They also did work to divide the Asian American population along lines of nationality and ethnicity, making categorization within “race” a focal point for Asian Americans and American racists alike. Times of racial crisis, then, as evidenced by these buttons, ironically, make us hyper aware of, and insistent upon, the lines which divide us from one another, even when the crisis is founded upon the tensions of difference. The LA riots, too, as Rev. Choi’s monologue shows, produced this same kind of hyper-identification, even as they simultaneously produced gross generalization and false groupings. To be differentiated from a group that is under attack or facing hatred, or from a group that is doing the attacking and hating, becomes a commodity, a goal, and even a necessity, when these tensions reach catastrophic levels. Twilight is easily read through this lens of hyper-identification, I think, and the multiple voices juxtaposed and performed almost simultaneously reinforce the lines of difference between them, but also, obviously, their similarities. Removed from all political agenda, then, at a basic level, Twilight shows the irony and futility of this need for separation, when previously imposed separation spawns violence.