“Other People Would Be Suspicious of You” from Desperate, Scared, But Social (1995)
“Did I try enough
To convince you
Of what I really mean?
But now I see
You all are here
For me
How did things turns out this way?
I’m living my dream each day
Giving what I can
And learning who I am
Now I look around me
And friends are all that I see
Everywhere I go
I hope that my heart shows”
I first encountered their music upon researching the Yao sisters — Amy Yao, a visual artist based in NYC, and Wendy Yao, founder of Ooga Booga, a DIY indie-punk bookstore previously located in LA’s Chinatown. Together with their friend Emily Ryan, they formed Emily’s Sassy Lime in 1993, one of the first teen Riot Grrrl bands fully comprised of Asian American women.
The trio, all attending high school in Southern California at the time, pursued Emily’s Sassy Lime as their own spontaneous project; each coming from very “strict Asian households”, they recount having to constantly navigate their “music stuff” in collaborative, slippery, indefinable ways— their sound is characterized as heavily lo-fi, with each song recorded on singalodeons, performances assembled with barely-practiced instrumentals, and song-writing half-completed through answering machines.
Perhaps this elusive sound partially contributes to how ESL becomes part of this larger narrative of women (of color) in punk, rendered invisible—their music buried underneath punk histories dominated by white culture. Rachel Kuo’s statement for “Building An Asian American Feminist Movement” speaks to this in some ways — “we seek to address the multi-dimensional ways with which the Asian/American community, particularly women, queer, and/or trans and gender-nonconforming people, confront systems of power…”. The abject spirit of zine/punk culture intertwines closely with the histories in making Asian-America in so many aspects, and looking into the motivations/stories behind largely forgotten projects such as Emily’s Sassy Lime allows us to explore that with more clarity (or informed uncertainties).