“Be the Refuge” shines light on Asian American Buddhism
By Derek Tahara | He/Him/His
Chenxing Han, author of “Be The Refuge.” Photo by Sarah Deragon
Growing up, Chenxing Han was raised as an atheist. However, a trip through Asia between her senior year of high school and first year of college introduced Han to Buddhism. In the fall of 2012, at the Institute of Buddhist Studies as a part of her master’s thesis, Han interviewed her first subject for a project, which transformed into her first book, “Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists.”
“I wanted a sense of community, meaning and connection because I didn’t have that and I didn’t have a community to plug in — a spiritual or religious community,” Han, who identifies as a non-sectarian Buddhist, told the Young Buddhist Editorial in a Zoom interview.
Han continued conducting interviews in 2013 and 2014. From 2014 to 2020, Han said she wrote different articles about the book and wrote a different version of the book than what was originally published in January 2021.
“Be the Refuge,” has several significant Buddhist themes. Han said themes some readers may resonate with are impermanence and interconnection. Other themes discussed in the book are the intersectionality of Buddhism with technology and social justice, Han noted.
“(We’re) talking about how we build diverse and inclusive Buddhist communities that are open and welcoming,” Han said. I think a lot of our generation, we’re thinking about issues in America of race, gender, sexuality.”
The book is divided into four parts. The first part, Han says, is aimed at multi-generational Buddhists. The second part is geared toward second-generation Buddhists whose parents most likely “immigrated after the 1965 Immigration Act that brought a lot of Asian immigrants to this country.” The third part, she says, is for convert Buddhists like herself, and wanted to emphasize “it can feel pretty invisible” when people don’t think of Asians as convert Buddhists. The last part describes activist Buddhists, which “brings together the first three parts” and offers themes of anger and privilege. In the last part, Han argues that “representation matters and our voices as Asian American Buddhists matter.”
To publish a book sharing Asian American Buddhist stories during the coronavirus pandemic was important for Han. She said no matter when she published the book in the past five years, it would have been relevant.
“I think it’s particularly relevant now, in that, my hope when I wrote this book, part of my hope was that it could be an act of spiritual care, an act of chaplaincy that’s something that I studied at the Institute of Buddhist Studies,” Han explained.
Challenges arose for Han to get the book published. During the writing phase of the book when she lived in Cambodia and Thailand, Han said she felt the book would never get published. She said Buddhist publishers and other book publishers would not accept her book. Han would spend a couple of years with two different publishers, but they would ultimately reject the book. In 2019, she received a book contract from North Atlantic Books and finished writing the book in 2020. However, her biggest challenge with “Be the Refuge” may be awaiting her.
“The biggest challenge of the book may be coming out. There’s still a lot to do even in the past year in terms of helping the book get out,” Han noted.
Han, who was living in Thailand for a year and a half before the pandemic struck, said she and her husband moved back to the Bay Area prior to the lockdown in the United States. They could not go back to Thailand to retrieve their belongings. She feels “enormously privileged” to be able to work from home and that their family is safe, but it’s been “crushing sometimes” to hear the news about the major disparities in the country.
There were many takeaways from the book, according to Han. One of the main points Han said is there is a deep history of Asian American Buddhism. The second takeaway is that there is a majority of Buddhists who are of Asian descent, but the “representations of American Buddhism do not reflect that reality.” The next takeaway Han wants readers to grasp is the diversity of Asian American Buddhists coming from different ethnic and racial backgrounds.
“I think I also want people to know that Asian American Buddhists are engaged. They’re active, not just passive, they’re engaged. They’re shaping what American Buddhism is,” Han suggested.
People who would like to purchase the book may visit: https://www.northatlanticbooks.com/shop/be-the-refuge/ or other booksellers, including https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/645635/be-the-refuge-by-chenxing-han/.
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated “Be the Refuge” as being “a collection of stories shared by Asian American Buddhists.” Han’s book is a work of narrative nonfiction that combines scholarship and memoir. The Young Buddhist Editorial regrets this error.
