Kimchi Mamas

Fighting the model minority myth

I’ve been missing in action here at Kimchi Mamas and Anti-Racist Parent (another blog I contribute to) lately. I’ve been incredibly busy since mid-summer. I’m working my regular 9-5, teaching a college course one night a week, presenting at conferences and preparing an application and studying for the GRE so I can apply to a doctoral program. All the while trying to keep my sanity as a mama to my two kids who are busy in their own after school and weekend activities.

Reading weigook saram's post made me think a lot about the model minority myth lead me to think a little bit about why I have this extraordinary drive (and some of my friends and family call it outright ambition) to keep pushing myself to do more. More and more seems my mantra lately. I’ve got everything a lucky person like me should need: a supportive family, a great education, a job that is rewarding, friends who understand why I’m running in circles all the time. So it’s during times like this that I stop myself to ask why I’m doing all this.

Obviously, a lot of it has to do with an inability (I promise, I’m really working on this!) to say no when I should. But it’s so much more than that. I’ve asked myself if I’m over-busy and over-ambitious because of the model minority trap. I’ve always felt insecure over not being the “model minority” because I was not super smart or super successful.

Growing up, all the images I had of Asian Americans were either 1) martial arts experts or 2) geeky dorks (like Long Duck Dong), 3) MIT-bound math or engineering whizzes or 4) over-sexualized and subservient Geishas.

I reveled in being the antithesis of the “model minority” throughout my twenties and early thirties. It was like, “If I don’t got it (model minority skills), flaunt it!” So I did.

I’m quite the late bloomer. I quit college to have kids and spent 8 years being a full time stay at home parent. I didn’t go back to school to finish my degree until I was 34. Now it’s like I can’t stop thinking about the next step, the next level. Is this part of a latent desire to tap into the model minority mindset I’ve been working so hard to fight all my adult years? Am I inadvertently becoming what I struggled against?

Unlike some of my Asian friends who grew up with Asian parents, super-success was never expected for me. My whole family is average in every way and even college was presented as a shrug of the shoulders. They look at me now like I’m working myself too hard. Yet some of my Asian friends share that they’re never good enough or successful enough for their parents. So it's interesting to me that now, getting close to the big 4-0, I'm finding myself trapped in this model minority myth even though it wasn't culturally part of my growing up experience in my family. Or, was it, by default? Even though my parents didn't raise me culturally as Korean or Asian American, I seem to have still absorbed it.

Any of you other Kimchi Mamas out there dealing with this? And how do I encourage my own kid’s successes without burdening them with the model minority expectations?

-- Jae Ran

Oh, Sandra!

I find it deeply troubling that Maxim magazine has rated Sandra Oh as the third most “un-sexy” celebrity. The survey says that men don’t find appealing Oh’s boyish figure and cold demeanor; but, damn if I can’t help thinking that it’s her small eyes and, well, Korean look that people are reacting against.

This whole survey is stupid and cruel, but I just had to say something. What’s wrong with these people? Sandra Oh is totally HOT!

Daniel Dae Kim is sick of doing Lost

'Fess up Daniel Dae, you were at Club Femme Nu weren't you, you naughty boy!

From People.

Open Thread Thursday

It's still Thursday... barely.  What's on your mind tonight?

-- The Kimchi Mamas

Lonely in the Midwest: Dinner, anyone?

I don't know if this stings so much more because I had only recently returned from Korea...

Last night, upon finding our refrigerator contents to be most uninteresting and unappealing to our palates, Little Nabi and I left our house to eat out.  After all, having been used to eating from a table crammed with ban-chan, the simple meals I cook for LN in the evenings seem... well, simple and BLAH.

As we were led to our table, I noticed an Asian family also being seated at the same time. 

Check out KoreAm Journal This Month

The October issue of KoreAm Journal features a piece that I originally wrote for Kimchi Mamas called "As American as Mom and Kimchi".  At their request, I reworked it a little, and it is published under the title "Becoming American" in this month's KoreAm Journal.

This is the first time I've had anything published in a print magazine, and I'm just thrilled.  My mom is still waiting for me to send her a copy, and now she is convinced she's going to be famous.  Anyone have an extra they can send me?  I've told her she's already famous among Kimchi Mamas.  Look out Hollywood!  Halmoni is coming your way!

--Glennia

Eye on South Korea

CNN is running a series called Eye on South Korea, including a story on the Korean Wave. Check it out.

(Via Angry Asian Man.)

--Weigook Saram

Open Thread Thursday

Guess what?  It's Thursday!  What's on your mind today?

-- The Kimchi Mamas

Shortcomings

Recently as I clicked around the internets, I came across an excerpt of Adrian Tomine's Shortcomings.  I was hooked.  I'm not really a comic book graphic novel person, but after reading Persepolis I and II and American Born Chinese, maybe I am a graphic novel person.  These books rock, and not only because I can finish the book in a weekend and feel like I'm actually reading something.  I think the combination of snippets of conversation and some simple imagery can go a long way in conveying a message.  Maybe the fact that it's so bare bones makes the message that much more obvious.  But that can't be *it*, because some of the stuff in Shortcoming or American Born Chinese is so complicated.

In one of my favorite scenes, Ben Tanaka and his girl friend Miko are leaving an Asian American film festival.  Ben, king of pessimism, attacks the film and everyone who cheered for it because it was an Asian American film... because to him, it was just a bad movie that they applauded simply because it was about Asian Americans.   Hmmm.  Have I ever been part of that?

I laughed and cringed all at the same time through all of the bits about interracial dating.  About the "right" kind of person to bring home, whether it be about gender or ethnicity.  Is it wrong for a person to have a "type?"  What if this type happens to be white girls?  Or white guys?  How politicized should we be in our dating choices?  We think we know the whole story when we see a "white" guy walking down the street with an Asian American girl.  But do we?  Maybe it's the familiarity of the images, but the newness of the stories lie a little deeper. I don't know. 

Check it out for yourself.  Or, find me and I'll lend you my copy. =)

~ eliaday

cross-posted at Boston Progress Radio

Open Thread Thursday

What's up?

--The Kimchi Mamas