The Shane Hollander Document

I write and update the "Shane Hollander Hockey Player" Google Doc (or "Hollandoc" for short) as a passion project to educate fans of the Heated Rivalry TV show and Game Changers book series on the actual relevant history, politics, and culture of a white-and-Japanese Canadian professional hockey player.

I originally began the project because the fandom was full of well-meaning but incredibly ignorant and misinformed claims from people with no Japanese heritage at all about how Shane Hollander "should" behave or be represented as one of us. Too many people think that studying Japan would tell them anything about the lived experiences of the Japanese diaspora, especially a sansei (third generation) like Shane Hollander, apply broad ideas of what "immigrant" or "child of immigrant" experiences are despite Shane being neither, or apply ideas of the "PoC" experience that aren't actually relevant to a person of East Asian descent because of our place within racial social structures.

Through the Hollandoc, I ask people to not only consider disadvantages Shane would hypothetically face as an Asian person of color in North America but also privileges he would have as an East Asian with partial white heritage, and how his race and sexuality interact with the conformist hockey culture he lives in.

I also ask people to consider Japanese Canadians more relevant than Japan. His nationality cannot be ignored or erased either.

The Hollandoc is meant to provide real historical and political details in order to create better discourse and fanworks. More than that, I hope it educates people on the actual reality of the Japanese diaspora and not just what they imagine or assume our lives are like, and encourages people to actually do research and identify what is actually relevant to research instead of making claims that sound accurate to people that don't know any better.

I will always keep the Hollandoc free. While I might move it off of Google Docs, I will make sure to link from the original Google Doc to its new home in that case.

Since my Undertrees newsletter covers history and I'm particularly interested in the history of the Japanese diaspora, I might write posts for the newsletter that end up being relevant to Shane Hollander. Anything that I do find relevant to Shane will end up in the Hollandoc eventually.

If you've enjoyed any of my work, I don't mind tips.