LGBT Book, Film & Video Blog

Review by Anthony King @ Bay Windows

Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights

by Kenji Yoshino (Random House)

Kenji Yoshino is out to change the way we look at our civil rights. As a gay Asian American and a law professor at Yale, he has every reason to worry about the legal, political and emotional fight that is at the forefront of gay rights. But Yoshino’s new book, Covering, isn’t just about the LGBT community. In fact, Yoshino thinks, “everyone can find instances of covering.” Covering is quite a simple idea. It is the act of stifling or changing individual behavior in order to fit in to the mainstream. These societal constraints are placed on us legally, of course, but the heart of Yoshino’s definition (and book) is that covering happens at a very personal, individual level. Think about it. Gays and lesbians are conditioned to not engage in public displays of affection. Hispanics are changing their names to cover their ethnic background. People with disabilities are forced to adapt their disability to the mainstream, often times hiding it completely. This is covering. Behavior is being regulated by the larger mainstream thus squelching individuality.

Getting the term covering into everyday vernacular, a goal of Yoshino’s, is the first step. It’s something he’s been working on for years. What started five years ago as an academic piece, evolved into what Yoshino calls his “life work.” And he wrote the book because of the acts of covering he was doing, and they surprised him, such as not holding his boyfriend’s hand in public. Currently, he is taking his ideas a step further by writing a comprehensive legal work on the affects of covering and the need to address civil rights of various groups under the umbrella of human rights. Which can only happen when we stop banding together in groups polarized from one another, which creates exclusion and division. Don’t be fooled by the fact that he’s a lawyer. The book is clear, concise and easily accessible. What little pieces of law are used as supporting textual evidence. He mainly writes about his own life in true memoir style. The results are outstanding.

I asked about how he thought civil rights would change and he gave me two components. The first component is legal. Yoshino is pushing for “rights based, not group based” initiatives. The second is cultural. “Civil rights have to occur in the culture, [and] conversations are the most important way for this to happen. Don’t back down from conflict to keep order,” he said. Conversations shouldn’t be “used to punish, but to educate people.” He then likened this idea of conflict conversations to two different strategies in dealing with someone. He said there are “face saving” and “face breaking” strategies. Saving face is an act of covering. Breaking face is an act of “having the conflict,” as Yoshino called it. He continued by saying: “It can be done in a frank way, sometimes educational. It is ironically the more respectful way of facing differences.” Obviously he hopes the book will stimulate these conversations, for it is these conversations that will lead to change in action.

Covering was released Jan. 17. He will read from the book at the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge on Thursday Feb. 2 at 7:30 p.m.