"My Mom's A Fucking Bitch Too.....!"

Asian-American Get Rich Quick Schemes

The Asian-American blogosphere has been abuzz in the past week over an article written by Wesley Yang in the New York Magazine entitled "Asian Like Me". My reaction to the article is mixed. On the one hand Yang has accurately  described the degree to which some Asian men may feel a sense of disconnect from their own, as well as from mainstream American society and culture. At the same time, I couldn't help but feel that ultimately, Yang hasn't actually said anything substantial to shed light on this state of affairs, choosing instead to apparently allow the overly-dramatic tone of the article to become the content of the essay.

Okay, I get it, some Asian parents drive their kids hard but so what? People of all races experience disconnectedness from their societies, cultures, families, and peers, what is different about the Asian experience that warrants such heavy soul-searching and self-recrimination? Because Yang's article doesn't really shed light on any dynamic that might be specific to the experience of Asian men, I couldn't help but wonder, why on earth did he racialize his essay to such a great degree. To me, based on what Yang wrote, he could have completely left out the racial aspect and been left with a much more powerful human story that would have made more sense.

How can this be? Ultimately, all Yang seems to be saying is "be more like your peers if you want to be more like your peers". Really?! In order to say that, he could have avoided the sappy dramatics and the issue of race altogether because although the article hints at a racial component to the issue, it never really goes all-out to address it head-on. If, as Yang seems to suggest, the race issue is secondary (or perhaps even irrelevant) to the problems he raises, then why bring race into it at all? But this is a dilemma - cultural differences aren't a sufficient explanation for the degree of marginalization described by Yang, but we'll never know because he avoids meaningfully addressing racial issues at all.

In some ways, we could conceive of this approach to describing the Asian-American experience as a  kind of "movement". This movement reflects a worldview and an approach to life and literature that seeks mainstream recognition and success at any cost. We could label this movement, "Kingsto-Tan-ism", in honour of the cultural figurines who modeled and popularized the literary approach of avoiding holding a mirror up to mainstream America's ugliness, and instead creating myths and fantasies based on wishful thinking and ingratiatingly downplaying of racial marginalization of the Asian minority. Ironically, Yang's article effectively perpetuates the process and reality of the feminization of the Asian-American experience by adhering to this philosophy.

Unfortunately, this is what sells, i.e., this is what it is widely believed white people want to read and believe about Asians - that their cultures are so dysfunctional that any racism directed at Asians by mainstream America is actually better for them than what they do to themselves and one another. I would love to be able to say that this is a state of affairs that is inflicted upon us by white hegemony, and that may well be part of the truth. The reality seems to be that Asians themselves play a role in maintaining the delusion because it's a way to sell books, get published, or become the toast of a mainstream that doesn't take too kindly to being called out on its prejudices - especially not by the likes of us.