Following up on a reply in the comments that I'd posted here, I wanted to put up the quote from Chris Iijima that I had paraphrased crudely. First of all, the group was loosely called Grain of Sand, not Yellow Pearl, though that was a song.
Grain of Sand is now in the Smithsonian Institute's Collection as the first Asian American record, and was a folksy, roots recording that captured the heady spirit of change and self-determination that peppered the liberation movements of the early seventies. Chris Iijima is now a professor of law, but I'm sure that he's still a guitar player and singer. I saw him at a conference at SUNY Albany many moons ago. He was raw and righteous, and the kind of professor that I hope I'll have wherever I end up. If I end up somewhere.
"Originally "identity" was less about who one was and more about what one stood for. Lost in contemporary definitions of Asian Pacific American "identity" is that it was conceived not primarily as an expression of racial pride, but as an expression of resistance to stereotypical assumptions about people of color in general and Asians in particular. Grain of Sand was essentially about celebrating the ability of people to grow in hostile soil. indeed, that is the foundation of the culture and "identity" of all American people of color. The album stands for the proposition that Asian Pacific American "identity" as solely a celebration of one's roots and without a larger political context of struggling for a more just society, is empty and incoherent. Indeed, that is the reason why most of the album does not deal directly with Asians and our "identity" at all." - Chris Iijima, 1997.
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