Paper Tigers

What do you know, it's Asian American history month! Interrupted by the fear of Rapture that is to come this Saturday, I realized that May is coming to a close, and I haven't posted anything Asian-American. How un-Asian-American of me. Jesus, that was a lot of hyphens.

My girl Chelle forwarded me this feature from New York magazine written by Wesley Yang, called "Paper Tigers". He poses the question, "What happens to all of the Asian-American over achievers when the test taking ends?"

Paper tigers is in reference to Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, who unfortunately has suffered at the hands of her own rapture. She basically scared everyone shitless, and has been publicly flogged for her scary Chinese mothering.

I appreciated the range of Asian-Americans that Yang interviewed for this 11 page feature. He represented the complexities fairly, and had something for everyone to relate to. I wish I could have written something this eloquent for my senior thesis, when I graduated from Asian American studies. I too frazzled and flighty to put the thoughts together.

I was a little irritated that Filipinos were not included in this conversation, but the Chinese half of me was enthused that the participants were so candid and honest. My favorite part was the "Romance Bootcamp," where Asian men were learning Alpha male techniques so that they can meet women.

I'm always concerned about my Asian men. Dating them, and watching them try to date, has been both painful and enlightening. Sex, socialization, power, and dominance are elements that shapes American power. The thirst to be accepted is understandable, but worrisome. If we create Alpha Asians to be up to par with their White counterparts, they are going to be as equally as annoying. Don't we have a term for these types of people? Yes, we call them douches.

As for the women, I met my fair share of Amy Chua's, and they make me shiver. They either emotionally unravel at the slightest touch, or they are the most unforgiving bitches that lack a fucking sense of humor. I can't decide which type I like more!

However, the attack on Chua was unfair. The Wall Street Journal posted the juiciest part of her memoir, which sent so many Asian women to an immediate trip to their therapists. The memoir was meant to explore the pros and cons of this type of parenting, but White people got themselves into a frenzy, because the assumed she was posing Chinese parenting as superior parenting. It made it sound like Chinese people put their kids through a concentration camp in order for them to succeed. Actually, that's an excellent idea, and it would be a profitable business model.

For the record, I do not have a tiger mother. My mother is a Filipino lion. She is responsible for my stunning personality. I've inherited her glare, so much so, that when I look at pictures of myself, I shudder in fear. It brings me back to childhood, and I'm in trouble, because I made my mother mad.

She would be so proud!

I love how Yang slightly surfaces the Asians that simply don't give a shit. It's not that blatant, but I sure did notice it and I giggled. I guess this is the category that I fall in. I've never treated education as life or death, but I my Western attitude of "doing my best" did serve me well. I can abandon the things that are not that important, and my life does not end if I am not good at certain things. However, I will become Asian when I give a shit about something. When I find a skill that I can do well, I hang on to that it like a life raft, and I obsess about it till no end. I will practice till it's perfect. Not just well, but perfect.

Anyhoo, Happy Asian-American month. Please feel free to give me your opinions about the article. I'm more than willing to discuss.

Here are some highlights that caught my attention:

" (She quotes a music teacher at Stuyvesant describing the dominance of Asians: 'They were mediocre kids, but they got in because they were coached.')"

"Colleges have a way of correcting for this imbalance: The Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade has calculated that an Asian applicant must, in practice, score 140 points higher on the SAT than a comparable white applicant to have the same chance of admission."

“At Stuy, it’s completely different: If you looked at the pinnacle, the girls and the guys are not only good-looking and socially affable, they also get the best grades and star in the school plays and win election to student government. It all converges at the top. It’s like training for high society. It was jarring for us Chinese kids. You got the sense that you had to study hard, but it wasn’t enough.”

"Mao was becoming clued in to the fact that there was another hierarchy behind the official one that explained why others were getting what he never had—“a high-school sweetheart” figured prominently on this list—and that this mysterious hierarchy was going to determine what happened to him in life. “You realize there are things you really don’t understand about courtship or just acting in a certain way. Things that somehow come naturally to people who go to school in the suburbs and have parents who are culturally assimilated."

"What if life has failed to make you a socially dominant alpha male who runs the American boardroom and prevails in the American bedroom? What if no one ever taught you how to greet white people and make them comfortable? What if, despite these deficiencies, you no longer possess an immigrant’s dutiful forbearance for a secondary position in the American narrative and want to be a player in the scrimmage of American appetite right now, in the present? How do you undo eighteen years of a Chinese upbringing?"

"If you are a woman who isn’t beautiful, it is a social reality that you will have to work twice as hard to hold anyone’s attention. You can either linger on the unfairness of this or you can get with the program. If you are an Asian person who holds himself proudly aloof, nobody will respect that, or find it intriguing, or wonder if that challenging façade hides someone worth getting to know. They will simply write you off as someone not worth the trouble of talking to."