Excuse My Gangsta Ways Is Both Illuminating And Uplifting

by Latoya Peterson, originally published at Jezebel

From the age of twelve to the age of seventeen, Davina Wan was in a gang. Excuse My Gangsta Ways reflects on a life in which a young girl could attend 35 funerals before the age of eighteen.

Directed and produced by Corinne Manabat, Gangsta Ways shares the powerful story of Davina Wan, a former gang member who charted a different course for her life after losing one of her closest friends. The description is here:

For most of us, wedding cakes and caps and gowns mark our life’s milestones. For D. Wan, it is switchblades and dog tags. Excuse My Gangsta Ways, a documentary by Corinne E. Manabat, explores the life of Wan, a Chinese American from New York’s Lower East Side, and her transition from a life of gang violence to a “normal” life. Visually poetic and uncompromising in its portrayal of gang culture, Excuse My Gangsta Ways uses interviews with Wan and her family to reach beyond stereotypes of urban gang members and America’s “model minority.” We will take a look at the person she was and the person she has become, where fate and inspiration endure.

When I saw the short film at this year’s DC APA Film Festival, I was blown away at the level of honesty and pain captured in a scant fifteen minutes.

Wan’s grandmother and godfather both share tales of Wan’s rebellion, beginning after her parent’s separation when she was young. Keenly describing the painful home situation she grew up in, it almost makes sense why she abandoned her former life and fell into an all-girl gang. However, through it all, she still dreamed of a different type of future. When one of her best friends dies, the tightly knit gang unraveled and Wan found herself wanting out. The film also explores her life now, and discusses the cost and result of that journey.

Manabat, in an interview about the film, talks about the ways in which Wan’s story challenged the predominant (and often stereotypical) narrative about the lives of Asian American women:

In the Q & A session after the film, Manabat mentioned that while her film was geared toward an Asian American/Urban audience in mind, the film was really for everyone – that the theme of transformation was most prominent. I agree – though gang life is a far cry from the relatively safe and stable world I grew up in, I felt myself relating to Wan’s tale of being lost and adrift in a hostile world. This articulation of the inner lives of young girls is rare, but explains why some of us flee from our homes early, often into the arms of older men, trying to “raise ourselves the best way [we] knew how” as Davina’s godfather put it.

Both Wan and Manabat do community outreach, and workshops targeted around the film – through their work, they are hoping to reach some of the other lost girls in the world, and show them there is a way for them to find something like home.

Excuse My Gangsta Ways [Third World Newsreel]
Official Site [DC APA Film Festival 2009]
My Space Page [Excuse My Gangsta Ways]
Next Screening [San Diego Asian Film Festival]

Latoya’s Note - Interestingly, the comments for this post were almost non-existent for a day or so after I posted it…until someone said they felt as though all this was fake. The reasoning? Asian American women don’t do things like join gangs. I thought it was kind of amazing, that even though I made a point to post Manabat’s discussion of how Wan’s story flies in the face of existing stereotypes, someone would still choose that pre-existing image over one woman’s lived experience. However, after that comment was made, others chimed in pointing out that obviously, people find themselves in all kinds of situations. – LDP

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Comments

Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist wrote:

“Interestingly, the comments for this post were almost non-existent for a day or so after I posted it…until someone said they felt as though all this was fake. The reasoning? Asian American women don’t do things like join gangs. I thought it was kind of amazing, that even though I made a point to post Manabat’s discussion of how Wan’s story flies in the face of existing stereotypes, someone would still choose that pre-existing image over one woman’s lived experience. However, after that comment was made, others chimed in pointing out that obviously, people find themselves in all kinds of situations. – LDP”

Oh god. Some idiots actually had the nerve to say that? People are shit. As long as ignorant and stupid people continue to exist, we will ALWAYS need documentaries like this one to remind us that we’re WRONG about racial assumptions and stereotyping.

Posted 04 Nov 2009 at 12:09 pm ¶
G.K. wrote:

Well,of course people would say that–the stereotype of Asian-Americans being only law-abiding dutiful citizens and any other stereotype attached to them is so ingrained in us by society and the media, and there is so little diverse representations of Asian-Americans in the media anyway (as well as African-Americans,too) that anything that goes against those stereotypes is thought to be an aberration.

The film (I haven’t seen it) sounds like it simply points out the fact that all Asian-Americans aren’t blessed with two-family homes and a sure shot to get into the latest college with a 4.o grade average. Some of them have messed-up home lives just like anybody else, and don’t necessarily have the family support or even a family to all their own. I guess because I’ve watched Asian and Asian-American films for years now, and been exposed to more of a full range of representations of AAs and Asians that you rarely ever see on a Hollywood screen, as well as reading lots of AA biographies and histories, hearing about a movie on a subject like this is no real surprise to me—I actually think it’s a refreshing antidote to the model minority stereotype.

Posted 04 Nov 2009 at 5:11 pm ¶
Margari Aziza wrote:

I’ll throw my two cents in:
I think it is funny that some people would doubt the authenticity of a video about an Asian living a less than exemplary lifestyle. My guess is thatt they have little exposure to the Asian American community in the inner city. I went to school where there were Asian gangs, as well as Mexican and Black gangs. The most violent incident that I witnessed at my school involved an Asian gang member shooting a white student. There were spots you didn’t go because you knew it was basically their turf. Even the Black guys who got into fights would say they didn’t really mess with the Asians because they often had guns and were ready to shoot.

Posted 04 Nov 2009 at 7:17 pm ¶
TN wrote:

“The reasoning? Asian American women don’t do things like join gangs.”
omg… REALLY?!?!?!? someone’s been living under a rock O_o

Posted 04 Nov 2009 at 8:53 pm ¶
Cindy wrote:

People believing the story was fake reinforces the need for this story to be out there. The woman perspective and the Asian American perspective are things we just don’t see when it comes to gangs in America.

Posted 04 Nov 2009 at 9:09 pm ¶
ashlynn wrote:

I will be honest and say that I was confused for a second when I saw the picture; partly because the photo seems so out of place next to “Excuse My Gangsta Ways,” and yes- partly because gangsta and Asian American female don’t automatically go together like rama-lama-lama in my head. But to flat out doubt the authenticity of Davina’s story- what purpose does that even serve? Say it actually were a parody, a piece of satire that the so called literary elite love to indulge themselves in. People would have eaten that up. But because this is real life, and real life through eyes that are rarely seen as anything less than perfect, it goes ignored.

Posted 04 Nov 2009 at 10:10 pm ¶
Bagelsan wrote:

Didn’t you know? Before they met white people, Asians had absolutely *no* organized crime or violence! True story! That’s right, civilizations thousands of years old without anybody joining gangs, or killing people for kind of bad reasons, or stealing stuff… [/sarcasm]

This makes me think of a counterexample to this stereotype, the anime Black Lagoon — one of the main characters is a young Chinese-American woman with a bad past who’s now a pirate and an infamously good shot. One of the other main characters, a Japanese man, isn’t surprised at how violent she is because she’s a crazy *American* (grew up in NY for goodness sake!) and of course, he being Asian as well, doesn’t bat an eye at the fact that she’s *Asian* and violent as hell. (Well, he technically bats an eye when she punches him in the face one time…) Mostly he’s just amazed at how screwed up she is at such a young age, and amazed at how little her screwed-up-ness bothers him, despite his own relatively sheltered upbringing.

I get kinda spoiled with anime, actually, because I forget about a lot of those godawful Asian stereotypes (not that anime doesn’t have its own problems, but stereotypes about Asians being non-violent as a “race” definitely isn’t one of them! See: every anime ever.)

Posted 05 Nov 2009 at 3:32 am ¶
tg wrote:

on a somewhat unrelated tangent, i met davina for a brief bit some time ago, but since then i’ve gotten a chance to read some of her poetry and i gotta say. shawty got the potential to be a giant of spoken word. hearing about this movie and her upbringing, it all makes sense now where she got the experiences to be able to write so vividly about the immigrant story

Posted 05 Nov 2009 at 6:50 am ¶
Genevieve wrote:

Aside from the idiotic “this just doesn’t happen!!” comment– I’d like to check this documentary out. Any news on widespread release or DVD?

Posted 05 Nov 2009 at 8:44 am ¶
Medusa wrote:

I would absolutely love to be able to see this but I don’t see how that can happen.

Asian American women don’t do things like join gangs.

One of the most asinine things I’ve heard so far today. I mean, yeah, MOST Asian American girls don’t join gangs, but neither do most African American girls and I’m sure no one would have a problem believing this story were it about a black girl. And the fact that “most” don’t doesn’t mean there hasn’t ever been an Asian American women in a gang in the history of time. Jesus fucking Christ.

Posted 05 Nov 2009 at 9:21 am ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:

@Genevieve/Medusa –

If you follow the third world newsreel link, there are various prices for purchase. The cheapest is $20 – but when I talked to Manabat after the screening, she said she did individual, non-distribution copies for about $10.

Posted 05 Nov 2009 at 10:50 am ¶
Nora wrote:

When is this coming to New York? I want to see it so badly.

Posted 05 Nov 2009 at 12:28 pm ¶
sweeterjuice wrote:

Clearly I’ve been watching far too many genre Asian films. I actually thought that the stereotype went totally the other direction. That is, Asian girls were _more_ likely to join gangs.

I need to get out more.

Posted 05 Nov 2009 at 1:21 pm ¶
lunanoire wrote:

Coming from public school in Los Angeles to a seven-sister college, at one point I realized that the Asian-Americans I interacted with at college were from a much narrower range of groups than the kids I interacted with in high school. L.A. is known for diversity and gangs.

Posted 05 Nov 2009 at 10:05 pm ¶
anon wrote:

Clearly, some of these goobers haven’t been walking around in Hollywood at night. After my jazz classes, I see Chinese guys with red bandanas in their back pockets cursing at people in their cars and stopped at red lights. There definitely are Asian people in gangs in the US. I’ve only seen males, but why wouldn’t there be some girls, too?

This is just common sense to me. But I also don’t live under a rock. Not that I’m excited to see people in gangs on the street, but… they’re there.

Posted 06 Nov 2009 at 4:50 am ¶
luckyfatima wrote:

My experience is the same as Margari Aziza’s; at my high school there was a lot of gang activity involving people of various backgrounds and there were Vietnamese and Cambodian girls attached to mostly male gangs. It is no surprise to me. I think the Asian-model-minority myth is most detrimental to the kids in these circumstances because I think white and also non-Asian teachers/educators also invest in that myth and are unsupportive to Asian scholastic failure even when reality is flying in their faces. They STILL stick to the idea that Asian kids are extra gifted at math and science and come from conservative, family oriented backgrounds—just like whoever commented that this documentary was a fake. So then these kids just slip through the cracks. And how far down they slip.

Posted 06 Nov 2009 at 5:07 am ¶
Tonya wrote:

I don’t understand why this would be so unbelievable to people. There are gangs everywhere with many different types of people. I think what the problem is is that the media only represents certain gang cultures, so that when one that is seemingly more underground, people act as though they don’t actually exist.

Posted 06 Nov 2009 at 2:28 pm ¶
Margari Aziza wrote:

One of the things about positive stereotypes is that that they normally enforce negative stereotypes about other groups. For example, ashlynn’s statement about Asian women and gangs don’t go together. But often in the minds of others, Black and Latina/Hispanic women and gangs do go together or rather form a perfect harmony of disfunction.

Posted 07 Nov 2009 at 11:47 am ¶
dan wrote:

Margari Aziza

Yeah, it’s always one group doing something too much while another too little with white people in the middle, being just right. I call it the “Three Bears Syndrome.”

About positive stereotypes, I like to believe that they’re always accompanied by negative ones which add up to a net negative. Asian women don’t join gangs (good) because they’re too shy/weak/dainty/whatever other stereotype(bad).

Posted 09 Nov 2009 at 3:27 pm ¶
silverkris wrote:

Shit. Don’t those people remember Asian gangs like the Black Dragons, BTK (Born to Kill) in NYC, and the Wah Ching and Joe Boys in San Francisco?

Look,whenever there’s poverty and social and economic dysfunction, you’ll find gangs in any ethnic group. Even today.

Posted 09 Nov 2009 at 5:05 pm ¶