Reflecting on a sinuous life as an omnivorous humanist

King-Kok Cheung | January 10, 2025

King-Kok Cheung is a UCLA research professor of English and professor emeritus of English and Asian American studies. A member of the UCLA faculty since 1984, she was honored in 2023 with a lifetime achievement award from the Association for Asian American Studies. The following is adapted from an article she wrote for the journal Literature, which she co-edited with former doctoral students Robert Kyriakos Smith and Hannah Nahm.

My sinuous life as an omnivorous humanist traversing disciplinary, periodic, geographical and national borders has yielded palpable wonders, the most wonderful being the opportunity to live and connect many lives.

Though I was born accidentally as a left-handed black sheep, I was made bilingual, bicultural and cosmopolitan in colonial Hong Kong, a classicist at Pepperdine, a Renaissance scholar at Cal, a multicultural and intersectional Americanist at UCLA, and a transnational and interdisciplinary comparatist by the University of California Education Abroad Program. The many splendors of literary America unraveled by Bruins of disparate stripes has driven me to herald the variegated beauty of Chinese American heritage — martial arts and Cantonese opera included — at UCLA.

I have gone from being an outsider, a suspect even, in both English and Asian American studies to being a resource and a brash maverick.

Two magic spells

Being “out of place” in the womb and in every nation has gifted me with the ability of conjuring everyone everywhere all at once — with the help of two magic spells. One is “Only connect” (E.M. Forster’s epigraph in “Howards End,” a required text for my Hong Kong matriculation) to facilitate the formation of lasting communities among colleagues, staff, students and even Uber drivers who love the humanities, regardless of disciplines and métiers.

The other is zhiyin, 知音, a spell I introduced to the 2023 graduating English seniors during my commencement address. Zhiyin calls forth the most intimate, almost telepathic connection. Any lover of literary and martial arts, music, painting and performance art is already a zhiyin of some poet, lyricist, composer, painter, auteur, sifu or performer. We can go from appreciating an artist on the page, in the air or on stage to stepping to the music or being buoyed by the qi, or energy/ethos, of the person next to us.

For these spells to work, a certain pas de deux is vital. As a connoisseur of writers, I want readers to feel their unique artistry, and I wish to go on record saying that AI can never replace zhiyin. My literary analyses are generated from the creative works themselves rather than using texts to illustrate a theory. Readers who relish a writer from reading my work are both the writer’s zhiyin and mine, and writers who second my ruminations are my vaunted zhiyin.

Upon being asked by a former student why I have so many zhiyin, I answered, “Through being one.” These two spells can call forth the most lasting, bracing and expansive communities. Mine are made up of writers, Bruins and students from the Four Seas. Former UCLA students who were venturing into uncharted territories offered one another and me intellectual, emotional and moral support. My bond with students in Asia has another nuance; because I took the liberty to teach texts considered problematic by the authorities, students pursuing heterodox projects need extra succor.

The human is the humanist

The Bruins I have kept in touch with have one thing in common: They are shining examples that “the human is the humanist.”

It cannot be sheer luck that every single one of my master’s and doctoral students can stand on the human pedestal — and the humanist one. Perhaps the world would be a better place if more politicians were humanists, zhiyin of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s “The Sympathizer” or Han Kang’s “Human Acts.” When asked by David Frost how he would like to be remembered, Robert F. Kennedy quoted Albert Camus: “Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children.”

If more heads of state were humanists capable of exposing themselves to “feel what wretched feel” (“King Lear,” 3.4.35), would there still be wars and genocides today? To quote Mahmoud Darwish, a more recent poet, “Won’t you memorize a bit of poetry to halt the slaughter?”

The humanities may bestow the most fertile ground to raise the young and sprout empathetic and self-sustaining interdependent communities — collegiate, intercollegiate, interdisciplinary, national, international, interracial and intergenerational.

First, it ranges across disciplines: many scientists, doctors, mathematicians and politicians are top-notch writers or musicians.

Second, it encourages nonbinary and multiple ways of seeing because there is no absolute right or wrong in the interpretation of literature and the fine arts, and the divergent points of view redound to plenitude and the tolerance of difference.

Third, it bridges people across generations. Because humanistic knowledge is cumulative, those of us seniors may revel in our own vintage to keep dotage at bay; we could also reach out to callow youth by learning their proclivities, and encourage them to return the favor. (A young kinsman humored me recently by producing a bilingual rap of the “Ballad of Mulan.”)

Fourth, because literature and the fine arts emanate from lived experiences, art and life perpetually animate each other to illuminate our way. If “all the world’s a stage,” humanists may be more proficient at directing their life and even others’.

Finally, our knack for zhiyin is a secret weapon peculiar to the artistic tribe. If a person can pulsate to the contrapuntal music of Su Shi and Shakespeare, Milton and Kingston, Beethoven and Tang Ti-sheng 唐滌生, she can also harken to the incipient bards within sight and earshot, so they would not blush unseen or sing unheard. Little wonder that so many faculty members and TAs in my department have won campuswide distinguished teaching awards.

Across space and time

In her forthcoming work “Chinese Time,” Maxine Hong Kingston writes: “Li Bai / and Du Fu, lucky sea turtles / found each other within their lifetimes.” The humanities have raised me to be a zhiyin across space and “Chinese time.” I need not envy the two Tang bards. Though not a poet, I have found, within our lifetime and facetime, Kingston and Fae Myenne Ng; Viet Thanh Nguyen and David Wong Louie; Marilyn Chin and Russell Leong; Richard Yarborough and Yun Zhao, a martial arts instructor at UCLA; the Yam-Pak-Tong Cantonese opera trio and beloved Bruins.

I have also crossed “eternal distances” to commune with Homer and Virgil, Shakespeare and Milton, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Li Qingzhao 李清照 and Su Shi 蘇軾. Am I not the luckiest sea turtle?

Hip hip, Humanities.