Helen Zia
former Executive Editor of Ms. Magazine, has received numerous journalism awards for her ground-breaking stories. Zia has been outspoken on issues ranging from civil rights and peace to women’s right and countering hate violence and homophobia. Her research on women who join neo-Nazi and white supremacist organizations provoked new thinking on the relationship between race and gender violence in hate crimes. Her work on the 1980s Asian American landmark civil rights case of anti-Asian violence is documented in the Academy Award nominated film, “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” The author of Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People, Zia is also co-author, with Wen Ho Lee, of My Country Versus Me, which reveals what happened to the Los Alamos scientist who was falsely accused of being a spy for the People’s Republic of China.
Student Review:
by Robert Gomez
“If winter’s monotony of grey skies and slush finds you yearning for verdant meadows with brimming daffodils. . . forget about your cabin fever and take heart,” writes Helen Zia, “Enhance Your Secret Life With Plants.” Zia began her California College of the Arts presentation with the story of her first publication. Initially, she said she wanted to write an article exposing the injustices suffered by Detroit ironworkers. After weeks of asking the local newspaper to be allowed to do so, they instead asked her to write an article about winter-blooming plants; she obliged. One of the most important maxims for a writer, Zia advised, is to be published. However small her first published article may have been, “Enhance Your Secret Life With Plants” (1982) opened the door to her career as writer activist.
Helen Zia is a respected Asian-American writer and queer activist. She authored Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People, and coauthored My Country Versus Me. She is a second generation Chinese American that has served as a socially engaged journalist throughout her life. She wrote, for example, some of the earliest essays linking Asian American communities to issues to issues of gay rights.
“Know your audience,” “challenge the master narrative,” urged Zia. Through a series of published articles interwoven with personal history, her charm and story telling highlighted a writer activist’s thesis: truth to oneself, and dedication to the craft of writing. The intersection of personal history and engaged writing underscored how the individual experience can challenge existing structures of power. She led her audience through anecdotes and publications of carrying the Olympic torch in 2008, to her personal participation in the movement for same-sex marriage.
In, “Where the Queer Zone Meets the Asian Zone: Marriage Equality and Other Intersections,” Zia reminds us of the adage that “none of us is free unless each of us is free.” She explains, that by choosing to stand up for the humanity of others, we all become more free. Zia has dedicated her writing career, in a sense, to fomenting that exact freedom for others. In three decades of published work, she has navigated the intersection of critically engaged writer and personally motivated activism. She admits that she has not dedicated herself to writing through critical theory, but invested herself thoroughly in socially engaged journalism. Through her engaging personality and dynamic story telling, Zia stands as a potent example of how the individual can resist dominant narratives through individual stories expressed with charm.
