Admission: Vanessa Place published my third book with Les Figues. This does not make this essay invalid. It does not make my thinking invalid. It does not make my criticism or praise invalid.

Vanessa Place is a performance of Vanessa Place. I do not know the real Vanessa Place, and sometimes I wish she’d just stand up.

I think about Lady Gaga a lot, her performance. Does she ever wear sweats? I don’t own any sweats, either.

The performance of Lily Hoang: serious cuteness—cuteness here being diminutive, I diminish myself, attempts to make myself smaller and less obtrusive.

Back in 2011, I wrote a post for HTML Giant on this one Das Racist lyric: I’m not racist, I love white people. In the post, I discuss how as PoC, we can criticize and generalize whiteness is a racist way, but white people can’t actually call us out. Instead, it takes PoC—preferably from a PoC of a “lower” positionality—to call out another PoC on their racism.
            And to call out a white person on their racism: just so terribly easy.
            But let us then examine what racism means.

Like Das Racist, I am not racist either—because I love white people.
            Perhaps like a fetish: all my boyfriends have been white.

Pigment as beauty, or handsome and charming.

The performance of her witchly black hair juxtaposed against her ghastly pale skin.

The performance of my grey hairs juxtaposed against my yellow skin.

You might notice I have yet to approach the Vanessa Place and AWP scandal—yet. Soon, perhaps, or not at all.

            Is scandal the right word? What is?

Ravi’s humorous revelation: AWP: All White People.

When Molly Gaudry, Matthew Salesses, and Erinrose Mager hug, we joke that we are the Asian Alliance.
            Maybe we don’t call it the Asian Alliance. Maybe I just made that up. But the truth remains that we hug and hence are a minor racial contingency at AWP, a way to make white people feel better about exclusion.
           But Asians are practically white—or so I’ve been told.

Two years ago, I gave my parents a dog. It’s all black and my racist father calls it Nigger Dog. My mom tsks him—tsk tsk—Not in front of Lily, she’s too American. All of this happens in front of me. My dad thinks it’s funny.

            Last year, my dad asks me for a white dog, to balance Nigger Dog and wetback dogs—two Chihuahuas—who unlike him, aren’t even US citizens. He’d like a reproduction of the hegemony please, a way to taste it.

Within hours, Das Racist tweets that I am stupid.
            #agreed

I’m not racist, I just want to be appropriated and used by white culture. I want acceptance. I want success. Besides, what’s so wrong about wanting to participate in power?

Drunken Boat published something that Vanessa Place wrote that could be perceived as racist, that has been perceived as racist.
            And I’m guess it’s a bunch of white people who are most offended. I could be wrong, but probably not.

Asian v. Oriental: white people care about this more than Asians. Yes, I’ve read Said. Yes, I know the difference. Yes, I cringe, especially when Asians call themselves Oriental. If a white person said this, I’d call them racist. If a white person used the word nigger, I’d call them racist.
           Is my father exempt?
           As a WoC, I can call out a PoC. As a WoC, I can call out anyone. Especially white people.

Do you dare to call out my racism? I double dog dare you and I’ll whip out my WoC card and demolish your white fucking privilege.

White people tend to be the most politically correct—because they’re so scared of being called racist.
           Mostly white academics.

In college, a white girl calls me out because I mix up the terms Latina and Chicana. She’s ¼ Chicana and codes white.
           In grad school, a guy who’s ¼ Japanese bonds with me because Asians don’t sweat. He also codes white and that’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard.
           But I do love the heat.
           I come from the heat, and my body has yet to evolve.

In a final exam, I ask my students to compare Writers of Color and how their positionality has influenced the texts they generated. A student calls me racist. He doesn’t know that WoC is the accepted term now. Maybe he thought I wrote Colored Writer.

            I tell my white boyfriend about this and he’s like, Person of Color? Seriously? He’s not an academic, per se, but he’s got a JD, which is close enough to know better. I argue with him until I become bored with how I need to defend language.

I talk to this white boy about white privilege and he says he’s never experienced it because he’s from Cuba. I tell him, But you code white, and he’s like, But I’m not, and I’m like, When you walk into a room, are you constantly cognizant of your Cubanness? Do you feel the discomfort of not belonging?, and he still argues against me, knowing that I am right.

I mostly appropriate white texts.

Our dear white canon—

Does Vanessa Place’s whiteness by default make her appropriation racist? Idk, but I’d like to see you call me out if I’d done the same thing. Bam: who fuck do you think you are, white person, to dare to call me racist? As if!

I want the hegemony to fold my Otherness into its power.

My ex-husband used to tell me that the only reason my books got published was to relieve white guilt. To parade my non-white last name.
           His white guilt was a burden on me.
           So I got rid of it.
           Ahem: I got rid of him.

I’m worried this essay is unfeminist.

What variety do you include in your imagined community?

If numbers dictate a certain truth, it’d be mostly white.

At &NOW—a conference on conceptual fiction—the swarm of whiteness. It’s like only white people dare to experiment. Are allowed to. Have enough power to challenge power.
           Am I, therefore, white enough for your liking?
           I don’t code white, but I practically am, except for my body. Except for my experience. Except
           for my life.

My white boyfriend believes in the meritocracy. Hahahahahaha.

I am critiquing myself more than Vanessa Place. I find little pleasure in calling white people racist. It’s too easy.

I often think white guilt is crushing. I’d hate to be white.

I’d prefer to be called a writer than an Asian American writer. Both are true, but white editors really like my Asianness to be called to highlighted. As if my name doesn’t betray who I am.

Indie whiteness. Indie Otherness. Say what?

In a Department Head meeting, I want to tell the Dean how she should be ashamed of how old white male the demographic is. I don’t, of course. I don’t even have tenure yet.

I don’t need to be reminded that I am a token. I can’t ignore it.

I don’t want to believe my white ex-husband. I want to believe my books were—are—published because I am a good writer. But what if he’s right? What if Vanessa Place just wanted a Woman of Color in her catalogue?
           I’d be hard-pressed to agree.
           I’m scared to agree.
           I am a coward.

Post-racial should not be understood as past-racism. The on-going dialogue should be acknowledged.

I know Vanessa Place as much as she knows Lily Hoang.

Vanessa Place is a site for conversation. Text substitutes body. Racisms abound.