Abstract
Julia Kwan’s 2005 film Eve and Fire Horse offers a glimpse into the life of nine-year-old Eve Eng and her Chinese Canadian family in the 1970s. Capturing the tensions and possibilities of multireligious belonging within an Asian American context, the film provides an occasion to discuss key moments in the author’s own development as a scholar, as well as current challenges and future directions for the study of Asian and Asian American theology and religious studies.
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Notes
- 1.
Khyati Y. Joshi, New Roots in America’s Sacred Ground: Religion, Race, and Ethnicity in Indian America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006).
- 2.
When I studied under Kaufman, we read God the Problem (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972) and The Theological Imagination: Constructing the Concept of God (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster John Knox Press, 1981). At the time, Kaufman was working on In the Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).
- 3.
Jane Naomi Iwamura, “Homage to Ancestors” would later be published as part of a special issue of Amerasia Journal 22, no. 1 (1996): 161–67.
- 4.
Rita Nakashima Brock, “Cooking without Recipes: Interstitial Integrity,” in Off the Menu: Asian and Asian North American Women’s Religion and Theology, ed. Rita Nakashima Brock et al. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 140. See also Brock, “Interstitial Integrity: Reflections Toward an Asian American Woman’s Theology,” in Introduction to Christian Theology: Contemporary North American Perspectives, ed. Roger A. Badham (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 183–96. I am greatly indebted to Brock’s work and mentorship. A pioneering voice, Brock articulated an Asian American feminist theological perspective as far back as the 1980s and her work and example continue to inspire.
- 5.
See Lisa Lowe, “Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian American Differences,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1, no. 1 (1991): 24–44.
- 6.
Jane Naomi Iwamura, Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and American Popular Culture (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011).
- 7.
In addition to Edward W. Said’s work on Orientalism, my perspective was greatly influenced by Jung Ha Kim’s essay, “Sources Outside of Europe,” in Spirituality and the Secular Quest, ed. Peter H. Van Ness (New York, NY: Crossroad, 1996), 53–74.
- 8.
Jane Naomi Iwamura and Paul Spickard, eds., Revealing the Sacred in Asian and Pacific America (New York, NY: Routledge, 2003).
- 9.
Kwok Pui-lan, “The Emergence of Asian Feminist Consciousness of Culture and Theology,” in We Dare to Dream: Doing Theology as Asian Women, ed. Virginia Fabella and Sung Ai Lee Park (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990), 98.
- 10.
Sharon A. Suh, Silver Screen Buddha: Buddhism in Asian and Western Film (New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 11–14.
- 11.
Russell M. Jeung, Seanan S. Fong, and Helen Jin Kim, Family Sacrifices: The Worldviews and Ethics of Chinese Americans (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019).
- 12.
See “Open in Emergency + the Asian American Tarot,” mimikhúc.com, https://www.mimikhuc.com/projects.
Bibliography
Brock, Rita Nakashima. “Cooking without Recipes: Interstitial Integrity.” In Off the Menu: Asian and Asian North American Women’s Religion and Theology, edited by Rita Nakashima Brock, Jung Ha Kim, Kwok Pui-lan, and Seung Ai Yang, 125–44. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007.
———. “Interstitial Integrity: Reflections Toward an Asian American Woman’s Theology.” In Introduction to Christian Theology: Contemporary North American Perspectives, edited by Roger A. Badham, 183–96. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998.
Iwamura, Jane Naomi. “Homage to Ancestors” Amerasia Journal 22, no. 1 (1996): 161–67.
———. Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and American Popular Culture. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Iwamura, Jane Naomi, and Paul Spickard, eds. Revealing the Sacred in Asian and Pacific America. New York, NY: Routledge, 2003.
Jeung, Russell M., Seanan S. Fong, and Helen Jin Kim. Family Sacrifices: The Worldviews and Ethics of Chinese Americans. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Joshi, Khyati Y. New Roots in America’s Sacred Ground: Religion, Race, and Ethnicity in Indian America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006.
Kaufman, Gordon D. God the Problem. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.
———. In the Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
———. The Theological Imagination: Constructing the Concept of God. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster John Knox Press, 1981.
Khúc, Mimi. “A Special Issue on Asian American Mental Health,” The Asian American Literary Review 7, no. 2 (2016).
Kim, Jung Ha. “Sources Outside of Europe.” In Spirituality and the Secular Quest, edited by Peter H. Van Ness, 53–74. New York, NY: Crossroad, 1996.
Kwok, Pui-lan. “The Emergence of Asian Feminist Consciousness of Culture and Theology.” In We Dare to Dream: Doing Theology as Asian Women, edited by Virginia Fabella and Sun Ai Lee Park, 92–100. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990.
Lowe, Lisa. “Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian American Differences.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1, no. 1 (1991): 24–44.
Suh, Sharon A. Silver Screen Buddha: Buddhism in Asian and Western Film. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.
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Iwamura, J.N. (2020). When Buddha and Jesus Danced. In: Kwok, Pl. (eds) Asian and Asian American Women in Theology and Religion. Asian Christianity in the Diaspora. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36818-0_6
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