The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing Read Free Book Online Page B

Open Ticket’s Southeast Asian refugees. Thinking through cosmological politics, they were also “converted” to American democracy. They each had a conversion ritual in a Thai refugee camp—the interview that allowed them to enter the United States. At this interview, they were required to endorse “freedom” and to show their anticommunist credentials. Else they would be enemy aliens: outside the fold. To enter the country, a rigorous assertion of freedom was necessary. The refugees might not know much English, but they needed one word: freedom.
    In addition, some of Open Ticket’s Hmong and Mien Americans have converted to Christianity. Yet—as Thomas Pearson has shown for Vietnamese Montagnard-Dega refugees in North Carolina—they have, from a U.S. Protestant point of view, a strange kind of Christian practice. 8 The point of conversion for an American Protestant is to be able to say, “I once was lost, but now I have accepted God.” Instead, the refugees say, “Communist soldiers pointed at me, but God made me invisible.” “War scattered my family in the jungle, but God brought us back together.” God operates like indigenous spirits, warding off danger. Instead of needing interior transformation, the converts I met came under protection through endorsing freedom .
    Again the contrast: A centripetal (in-spinning) logic of conversion drew my family and my Japanese American friends into an inclusive, expansive United States of assimilative Americanization. A centrifugal (out-spinning) logic of conversion, held together by a single boundary object, freedom, shaped Open Ticket’s Southeast Asian refugees. Thesetwo kinds of conversion can coexist. Yet each was carried on a distinct historical wave of citizenship politics.
    It seems quite predictable, then, these two kinds of matsutake pickers do not mix. Japanese Americans picked commercially at the beginning of Japan’s import boom; but by the late 1980s, they were overtaken by white and Southeast Asian pickers. Now they pick for their friends and family rather than to sell. Matsutake is a treasured gift and a food that confirms one’s Japanese cultural roots. And matsutake picking is fun—a chance for elders to show off their knowledge, for kids to play in the woods, and for everyone to share delicious bento lunches.
    This kind of leisure is possible because the Japanese Americans I accompanied had entered a class niche of urban employment. When they returned from the camps after World War II, as I explained, they had lost their access to farms. Still, many resettled as close to the places they knew as they could. Some became factory workers and were able to join newly integrated unions. Others opened small restaurants or worked in hotels. It was a time of growing wealth for Americans. Their children went to public schools and became dentists, pharmacists, and store managers. Some married white Americans. Yet people keep track of each other; the community is close. Matsutake help maintain the community even though no one depends on them to defray living expenses.
    One of the best-loved matsutake forests of this community is a pine-studded, moss-covered valley, as smooth and clean as the grounds of a Japanese temple. Japanese Americans are proud of how carefully they maintain the area for both people and plants. Even the foraging areas of the deceased are remembered and respected. In the mid-1990s, a bold, white bulker-buyer from Open Ticket brought a load of commercial pickers to this area. The commercial pickers were not used to careful harvesting; they needed to cover a lot of ground to make the day’s pick. They tore up the moss and left the place a mess. A confrontation ensued. Japanese Americans brought in the Forest Service, who advised the buyer that commerce inside national forests is prohibited. The buyer accused the agency of racial discrimination. “Why should Japanese have special rights?” he reminisced to me, still sore. Finally, the