wesley yang's "paper tigers"

A few days ago, I read Wesley Yang's NYMagazine article, "Paper Tigers," which speaks to the model minority stereotype and the "Bamboo Ceiling," the Asian-American counterpart to the glass ceiling for women.  I really liked reading about someone else's Asian-American experience, which I usually find in novels and short stories, but not much in journalism.

While reading through his real-life examples of people at varying odds with their Asian-American identity, including himself, what struck me the most was how absent females were from the article.  What does that mean about Asian-American females?  How does their (our!) understanding fit in to the overall Asian-American experience, not to say the larger minority and American experiences in the U.S.?  What makes people draw different lines to include or exclude themselves and other people from groups?

These are fuzzy lines.  I like how Slate.com blogger Nina Shen Rastogi put it:

The fact is, every individual is marked by several overlapping forms of identity—not just ethnicity but also gender, class, attractiveness, intelligence, and distance in time and space from the emigrant country.

I think one of the dangers is ascribing your personality, tendencies, assertiveness and social skills or lack of, life experiences, even success in romantic relationships, to only one of your identities, which in this case is the racial identity. I've definitely done it! When I was in middle school I thought boys didn't like me because I was Chinese, which is untrue, but felt extremely real in my forming adolescent mind.  Like walking through a tunnel where everything is heard loudly and felt to the bone.  At the same time, there are things I feel like I've culturally 'inherited' as part of the larger Asian-American community, strengths and weaknesses - although it's always weaknesses that elbow you a little harder and make you point fingers to redirect the blame.

Regardless, what I appreciate about the article, just like all the press that surrounded Amy Chua's Battle Hymn, is the dialogue that comes out of it, more people who are thinking about these usually invisible topics. It makes me wonder if it's part of the American experience to feel fragmented, or if that's just human nature.