Kenji Yoshino's Treatisecovering: An Analysis

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Although Kenji Yoshino’s 2006 memoir/treatiseCovering focuses specifically on the gay experience, it can also be valued for its ability to explore secreted and unarticulated themes common to us all. The very opening of the book asserts that we all cover, meaning that it is our nature to “tone down a disfavored identity to fit into the mainstream,” and that “in our increasingly diverse society, all of us are outside the mainstream in some way.” (Yoshino, 2006, Preface x). Yoshino contends there is an evolution to an individual’s gay experience and he believes there are four ways in which gays cover. “Appearance concerns how an individual physically presents herself to the world. Affiliation concerns her cultural identifications. Activism…show more content…
However, to say that insistence is the “only” way that social change happens would be presumptuous and naive. Today’s society is like water in that it always seems to take the path of least resistance. If there is any obstruction it will simply go around. Most people don’t want their lives interrupted by pressing issues like gay or civil rights. They are viewed as obstructions. To maintain social flow, insistence for change by the struggling groups will be largely ignored and the norm of society will use assimilation as its justification vehicle, resulting in covering. In order to change, “we must be willing to see the dark side of assimilation, and specifically covering, which is the most widespread form of assimilation required of us today.” (Yoshino, 2006, Preface xi) This profound statement elaborates on the idea that change will occur when society is educated enough to realize the identity assassination that occurs with assimilation. Education, as it has in the past, will be the best way for social change to occur. Insistence will always encounter resistance, where education will cause

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