Ray Hsu
On writing, funding effects and activism
On writing, funding effects and activism
Part 2 of 2
By Heidi M. Pascual
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has a great reputation that draws a large number of international students
every year. Many end up working as university faculty or in private firms doing business globally, and making Madison
their new home. This is especially true for international students pursuing engineering, IT and other technology or
science courses. For those pursuing other fields, the demand might not be as great; nevertheless, working or teaching
at UW-Madison has always been an attractive option.
Ray Hsu, a Toronto-born Ph.D. student at the UW-English Department, has wanted to do exactly that, primarily
because of what he has invested so far in terms of his collaborative work with different local communities outside the
confines of academia.
In the first installment of this article (April 2008), Hsu discussed how funding affects the way people write — the
focus of his doctoral dissertation — and his experience with the creative community in the prison system, lamenting how
the bureaucratic setup hinders even the simple receipt by mail of an inmate’s published work. In this final installment,
Hsu talks about his plans for the future.
A writer, an activist and a teacher
“My plan after graduation is to be a professor,” Hsu said hopefully. “I mean, for me, being a professor would mean
being a writer and also being an activist and a teacher. And I suppose for many people that isn’t necessarily the case,
that you’d have all those three wrapped up in one package, so to speak. But basically, being a professor would offer
me the platform in which to be able to do these things. The thing is, that it’s different from many other positions that
many of us do choose. It means that if you wanted to do, for example, activist work, you know that you have an ally
who is well-positioned within a university system to be able to help out. So basically it’s a position in which I can
help out other people to be able to do the things they want and need to do and at the same time, I will be able to call on
them to be able to help me with whatever projects I want to do.”
An activist vs an organizer
When asked whether or not he considers himself an activist, Hsu first reflected on statements he had heard from
others in the past, essentially comparing activism to organizing. “Actually I’ve been thinking more about that, but what
exactly is the difference?” he said. “A former member of Weather Underground, a militant arm of the Weathermen
(during the ‘70s) said, ‘the difference between being an activist and being an organizer is that organizing involves a
whole lot of people whereas activism does not necessarily involve a lot of people.’ So if you’re doing work by
yourself, you may be an activist; but you won’t be an organizer. So do I think of myself as an activist? I’m beginning
to try and see whether or not I can think of myself as an organizer rather than an activist, although right now I do
identify as an activist because I would be much more interested in thinking not just in terms of the good things that I
can do, but also in terms of how I can be some kind of a weigh-station for a much larger social movement or something
on a bigger scale than just myself.”
Does the label ‘Asian’ affect Hsu’s writing and scholarship?
“That’s a challenging question for me, and in my opinion, it’s one that I often don’t answer satisfactorily,” Hsu
admits. He recalled his elementary and high school years when his teachers were supportive of his writing and
creativity, and didn’t make him feel isolated. The realization that he was ‘different’ because of his ‘Asian’ looks took a
turn when he was in college and entered a discipline in which the distribution of Asians was relatively small — English.
“At the University of Toronto campus, the science and the arts are segregated,” he noted, adding that there were few
students of color in the English Department as compared to the Engineering Department, for example. “I grew up
partly not having to deal with this question very much. Oftentimes people wouldn’t necessarily put it in my face —
that I am Chinese Canadian. When I was trying to figure out what to study, I went and talked to the job-placement
officer in the English Department. He said, ‘Oh, what do you want to study? I said, ‘I want to study the Renaissance,
like Shakespeare …’ and he said, ‘That sounds like a good idea; and you know what … I’m just trying to be practical
here and strategic, but if you really want to focus on let’s say Asian American … ‘and this was completely unrelated
to anything that I said before. So it was one those things where I suddenly became very conscious of the fact that he
was interpreting me according to race and ethnicity, which made me only want to, in a sense, retreat even further into
what was the canon, I suppose, like Shakespeare, dead White guys basically.”
He also recalled a time when he was asked after he read his writing about an Austrian Jewish writer who lived in the
early 20th century and through World War II, “‘What’s your connection to this guy? Because obviously you’re not
writing about an Asian Canadian.’”
While Hsu doesn’t necessarily want to ‘retreat,’ he grew up with a kind of reactionary perspective. “I was very
uncomfortable with the fact that I might be mistaken for someone who was merely ‘Asian American,’ for example, Hsu
emphasized. “I wanted to be more than just that label. I was very uncomfortable with being labeled that. The thing is,
that the label has a certain kind of legacy, some effect on how I am now.”
Every now and then, he is reminded of the fact that he’s expected to do certain things, which makes him want to do the
opposite. “I just want to respond to that by not writing about those things, which is not necessarily the most
productive way to go,” Hsu admitted. “What would be much more productive is to write about things that actually
question why I would have to divide those things up, why other people seem to be invested in dividing those things up
themselves, and what this entire division means — that certain people can write about some things, and certain people
can’t write about other things.”
Hsu’s father used to remind him when he was growing up that everything being equal, when a White person and a
person of color compete for a job, the White person gets the job. “‘What that means is that you have to be better,’” his
dad reportedly said to him.
“It’s tough to know how much of that is really informed, but I just keep remembering that, which probably means
that it does happen. It probably means that a lot of these things that I do, I’m not even sure if it’s true, I’m constantly
evaluating myself. I think I’ve been relatively ‘successful’ in terms of work, whatever that means, and I have my
qualms about how we think of success anyway. But even in terms of relationships … I’ve had relationships in which I
think I wondered to myself whether or not someone else was chosen over me on the basis of Whiteness or on the basis
of Asian-ness. So it’s a question that keeps coming up to me.”
Immediate challenge
As part of the academic community, Hsu admits that the law of supply and demand is at work: there are very few
positions available for many graduates. “The most conservative moment is the moment of applying for a job as junior
faculty,” Hsu reflected. “Basically, people are falling over each other in order to get hired. That means that the people
who are on hiring committees can ask for ridiculous things, combinations of things, that you would have to be
superhuman to do and accomplish. So this moment of hiring junior faculty is not only my challenge; it’s also the
challenge of a lot of people who may or may not be in my position. If I don’t get this professorship, this institutional
position that will allow me to do things, then I have to find alternative venues. And that’s going to change the entire
nature of the work that I do.”
While considering the challenge that he now faces, Hsu thinks of alternatives to fall back on in case he doesn’t
initially gets what he wants. “In fact there are mainstream professorial positions, like for example, in literature or
creative writing,” he said, and recalled other alternative positions that are “much more interesting.” This includes
“cultural studies,” a very scholarly academic position in the U.S.
“In some other countries, they’re doing cultural studies work that is very tied to the communities in which they are
enmeshed,” Hsu explained and described the program that was started at one of the University of Washington
campuses. “They’re not yet invested in more academics, which would basically allow institutions that simply
reproduce academics to expand the basis of their power. Because then, those accollades would then go out and then
spread across the nation and expand their power or they become well placed. This program is invested in producing not
only academics but also artists and activists. It’s very much a question of not just reproducing the conditions of your
own power. But we’re distributing things in ways that are most radical.”
(Ray Hsu has accepted a teaching position at the University of British Columbia. UW-Madison has just lost a potential
asset to its faculty.)
By Heidi M. Pascual
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has a great reputation that draws a large number of international students
every year. Many end up working as university faculty or in private firms doing business globally, and making Madison
their new home. This is especially true for international students pursuing engineering, IT and other technology or
science courses. For those pursuing other fields, the demand might not be as great; nevertheless, working or teaching
at UW-Madison has always been an attractive option.
Ray Hsu, a Toronto-born Ph.D. student at the UW-English Department, has wanted to do exactly that, primarily
because of what he has invested so far in terms of his collaborative work with different local communities outside the
confines of academia.
In the first installment of this article (April 2008), Hsu discussed how funding affects the way people write — the
focus of his doctoral dissertation — and his experience with the creative community in the prison system, lamenting how
the bureaucratic setup hinders even the simple receipt by mail of an inmate’s published work. In this final installment,
Hsu talks about his plans for the future.
A writer, an activist and a teacher
“My plan after graduation is to be a professor,” Hsu said hopefully. “I mean, for me, being a professor would mean
being a writer and also being an activist and a teacher. And I suppose for many people that isn’t necessarily the case,
that you’d have all those three wrapped up in one package, so to speak. But basically, being a professor would offer
me the platform in which to be able to do these things. The thing is, that it’s different from many other positions that
many of us do choose. It means that if you wanted to do, for example, activist work, you know that you have an ally
who is well-positioned within a university system to be able to help out. So basically it’s a position in which I can
help out other people to be able to do the things they want and need to do and at the same time, I will be able to call on
them to be able to help me with whatever projects I want to do.”
An activist vs an organizer
When asked whether or not he considers himself an activist, Hsu first reflected on statements he had heard from
others in the past, essentially comparing activism to organizing. “Actually I’ve been thinking more about that, but what
exactly is the difference?” he said. “A former member of Weather Underground, a militant arm of the Weathermen
(during the ‘70s) said, ‘the difference between being an activist and being an organizer is that organizing involves a
whole lot of people whereas activism does not necessarily involve a lot of people.’ So if you’re doing work by
yourself, you may be an activist; but you won’t be an organizer. So do I think of myself as an activist? I’m beginning
to try and see whether or not I can think of myself as an organizer rather than an activist, although right now I do
identify as an activist because I would be much more interested in thinking not just in terms of the good things that I
can do, but also in terms of how I can be some kind of a weigh-station for a much larger social movement or something
on a bigger scale than just myself.”
Does the label ‘Asian’ affect Hsu’s writing and scholarship?
“That’s a challenging question for me, and in my opinion, it’s one that I often don’t answer satisfactorily,” Hsu
admits. He recalled his elementary and high school years when his teachers were supportive of his writing and
creativity, and didn’t make him feel isolated. The realization that he was ‘different’ because of his ‘Asian’ looks took a
turn when he was in college and entered a discipline in which the distribution of Asians was relatively small — English.
“At the University of Toronto campus, the science and the arts are segregated,” he noted, adding that there were few
students of color in the English Department as compared to the Engineering Department, for example. “I grew up
partly not having to deal with this question very much. Oftentimes people wouldn’t necessarily put it in my face —
that I am Chinese Canadian. When I was trying to figure out what to study, I went and talked to the job-placement
officer in the English Department. He said, ‘Oh, what do you want to study? I said, ‘I want to study the Renaissance,
like Shakespeare …’ and he said, ‘That sounds like a good idea; and you know what … I’m just trying to be practical
here and strategic, but if you really want to focus on let’s say Asian American … ‘and this was completely unrelated
to anything that I said before. So it was one those things where I suddenly became very conscious of the fact that he
was interpreting me according to race and ethnicity, which made me only want to, in a sense, retreat even further into
what was the canon, I suppose, like Shakespeare, dead White guys basically.”
He also recalled a time when he was asked after he read his writing about an Austrian Jewish writer who lived in the
early 20th century and through World War II, “‘What’s your connection to this guy? Because obviously you’re not
writing about an Asian Canadian.’”
While Hsu doesn’t necessarily want to ‘retreat,’ he grew up with a kind of reactionary perspective. “I was very
uncomfortable with the fact that I might be mistaken for someone who was merely ‘Asian American,’ for example, Hsu
emphasized. “I wanted to be more than just that label. I was very uncomfortable with being labeled that. The thing is,
that the label has a certain kind of legacy, some effect on how I am now.”
Every now and then, he is reminded of the fact that he’s expected to do certain things, which makes him want to do the
opposite. “I just want to respond to that by not writing about those things, which is not necessarily the most
productive way to go,” Hsu admitted. “What would be much more productive is to write about things that actually
question why I would have to divide those things up, why other people seem to be invested in dividing those things up
themselves, and what this entire division means — that certain people can write about some things, and certain people
can’t write about other things.”
Hsu’s father used to remind him when he was growing up that everything being equal, when a White person and a
person of color compete for a job, the White person gets the job. “‘What that means is that you have to be better,’” his
dad reportedly said to him.
“It’s tough to know how much of that is really informed, but I just keep remembering that, which probably means
that it does happen. It probably means that a lot of these things that I do, I’m not even sure if it’s true, I’m constantly
evaluating myself. I think I’ve been relatively ‘successful’ in terms of work, whatever that means, and I have my
qualms about how we think of success anyway. But even in terms of relationships … I’ve had relationships in which I
think I wondered to myself whether or not someone else was chosen over me on the basis of Whiteness or on the basis
of Asian-ness. So it’s a question that keeps coming up to me.”
Immediate challenge
As part of the academic community, Hsu admits that the law of supply and demand is at work: there are very few
positions available for many graduates. “The most conservative moment is the moment of applying for a job as junior
faculty,” Hsu reflected. “Basically, people are falling over each other in order to get hired. That means that the people
who are on hiring committees can ask for ridiculous things, combinations of things, that you would have to be
superhuman to do and accomplish. So this moment of hiring junior faculty is not only my challenge; it’s also the
challenge of a lot of people who may or may not be in my position. If I don’t get this professorship, this institutional
position that will allow me to do things, then I have to find alternative venues. And that’s going to change the entire
nature of the work that I do.”
While considering the challenge that he now faces, Hsu thinks of alternatives to fall back on in case he doesn’t
initially gets what he wants. “In fact there are mainstream professorial positions, like for example, in literature or
creative writing,” he said, and recalled other alternative positions that are “much more interesting.” This includes
“cultural studies,” a very scholarly academic position in the U.S.
“In some other countries, they’re doing cultural studies work that is very tied to the communities in which they are
enmeshed,” Hsu explained and described the program that was started at one of the University of Washington
campuses. “They’re not yet invested in more academics, which would basically allow institutions that simply
reproduce academics to expand the basis of their power. Because then, those accollades would then go out and then
spread across the nation and expand their power or they become well placed. This program is invested in producing not
only academics but also artists and activists. It’s very much a question of not just reproducing the conditions of your
own power. But we’re distributing things in ways that are most radical.”
(Ray Hsu has accepted a teaching position at the University of British Columbia. UW-Madison has just lost a potential
asset to its faculty.)
Ray Hsu