My Thoughts on Wesley Yang's New York magazine Feature "Asian Like Me": What a Long, Strange Trip
Hey look, another volley in the unending culture wars over Tiger Mom! This one, "Asian Like Me" (or, as it's titled in the interior, "Paper Tiger") is written by Wesley Yang — no relation, as far as I know, he's of the Korean branch of the clan. It's on the cover of this week's New York magazine. And it's a very strange article.
There are pieces of it I agree with, but it's wrapped in so much self-indulgence and reconstituted and redirected self-pity that those useful and interesting bits end up bobbing in the prose like drowning castaways.
I guess this is how I'd respond: The counterposition to being a good little Tiger Cub isn't a defiantly proud lack of success. And celebrating your inability to engage with the world and its rules doesn't automatically make you a genius—in some cases, it just makes you a misanthropic asshole.
Paragraphs like this:
"I wanted what James Baldwin sought as a writer—'a power which outlasts kingdoms.' Anything short of that seemed a humiliating compromise. I would become an aristocrat of the spirit, who prides himself on his incompetence in the middling tasks that are the world’s business. Who does not seek after material gain. Who is his own law."
Makes me feel like the author doesn't really understand the context of James Baldwin's writing...or, for that matter, his own. Especially since his cultural analysis of the Tiger Mom phenomenon has the same lack of examination of class that Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother does, only from the other side.
You see, plenty of people go to Rutgers not because they're seeking to become "aristocrats of the spirit" — free of Ivy bullshit and Tiger parent hyperexpectation — but because it's one of the top 50 or so colleges in the world (ranked ahead of Brown in the most recent Academic Ranking of World Universities) and because it's affordable...if they're paying for their own education.
My wife, for instance.
Her parents didn't even go to high school, immigrated to the U.S. with nothing but debt in their pockets, and ran a series of restaurants with middling success, which she and her brothers toiled at throughout their teen and young adult years.
Although her parents had neither the desire nor the resources to send her to college, she saved her money from multiple part-time jobs and ended up being the first person in her family to ever get a university degree — then went on to get her Masters at Duke, also on her own dime. My in-laws — God love them — are the inverse of Tiger parents; all they ever wanted was for Heather to get married and have kids and not work as damned hard as they had to all their lives. Well, two out of three ain't bad, I guess....
Anyway, my point is that the interesting things Wesley Yang has to say in this article end up getting suffocated by his solipsism. A dead giveaway is his failure to interview any Asian American women for the story — which, perhaps, is due in part to his embrace of the idea that sexual success can be conflated with financial/professional/ontological success.
The two don't necessarily go hand in hand, man.
I don't know Yang but have seen and heard things about Jeff Yang, who breaks the mold with his writing and subjects and interviewing style. But he epitomizes what is lacking in our subculture, Asian America, no one ever covers the other's back. African Americans and Latino's would never ever do this to one of their own.
Wesley Yang again is just using the logic of multiculturalism and minority politics in America. Jeff Yang's logic is actually that of 'model minority' Asian American, I am powerful, I am equal, yada, yada, yada.
Jeff, don't erase my post okay.
J
I think you're suggesting that I shouldn't criticize Wesley Yang because he's also Asian? And that somehow, Wesley's writing is the logic of "real minority politics" while mine is the logic of the model minority? Not sure how that's the case...I suspect that Wesley broadly rejects minority politics even as he rejects the notion of model-minority-ism.
That said, we can't grow as a community if all we do is pat each other on the back. Given that Wesley's piece spends most of its time slamming the vast bulk of Asian Americans, I think he'd agree with that. I respect his other writings, but I feel like this piece was deeply flawed in its argument, balance and structure. Should I not say that? Or would you rather I relegate myself to the role of quiet, passive onlooker without a voice?
It's unsettling I guess to see this counter position in an Asian man. When reading his article, I found it reeked of identity crisis/inferiority complex rather than self reflection which is unfortunate.
I feel like for me anyway, that the Asian-American experience is a cultural one where the struggle comes from bridging the divide between the two cultures "Asian" and "American", the 1st and 2nd generations, the subsequently differing mentalities and the conflict that arises when the two collide. W. Yang doesn't seem to address this at all. He just hates what he sees in the mirror and wants to be disassociated with it and that's disappointing I guess.
I think that is pretty admirable and what he is saying is that he is a master of his own fate and person, even if there is no reward for it or if it ends badly.
A stable high paying job and a mortgage is great, but the problem is there is no intrinsic point to those activities. And if you find none, you will have lost something in life.
He also didn't really dig at Rutgers much except to imply that he went there and it's of only a modest pedigree (compared to places like Oxford, Harvard, or Sandhurst where it would be a shame to not make something of yourself).
ei yi yi.
SB
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Rolande
Armand
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