All posts in category asian-americans

K-Town reality show: ain’t no Jersey Shore

I love television shows. I’m also keen on seeing more Asian representations on television. So when K-Town  (aka Jersey Shore for Asians) finally made its online debut after casting changes and delays, I had to watch it, of course.

The result?

Ehhhh.

Lots of drinking, hair-pulling, drinks being thrown, etc. What else did I expect?

Despite my reservations, I dutifully introduced this show to another Asian Canadian friend, and we ended up having a K-Town marathon on her big-screen TV. After binging on the drama, we inevitably asked ourselves the question that many people have asked about this show: Is this show good for Asian Americans?

Ehhhh.

I mostly find the men’s portrayal on the show more interesting than the women’s, mainly because we don’t see many Asians in “jock” or “partier” (or I might even say “ditz” if I’m feeling mean) roles. It’s also kind of refreshing to see a host of Asian Americans existing as an entire world, rather than as tokens in a white-washed one of mainstream television. It has the Asians: they’re just like us! effect. Even if that “just like us” message is geared towards…shirtlessness and belligerence. (note: the pictures from the Disgrasian link feature some of the old cast members, who are no longer on the current version of the show)

Then again, K-Town’s failed distribution deal with MTV is perhaps telling of the racial landscape of television — whereas Italian Americans were seen as capable of capturing a wider audience, Asian Americans are not there yet.

But race might not be the only factor that hindered its success. In my opinion, there is a general absence of heightened drama in K-Town that prevent it from being a true guilty pleasure. From what I can tell, the show (as it is now, after some casting changes) seems to consist mostly of friends who knew each other before, besides a couple of additions. This gives the viewer a sense of intruding upon something that was already established, rather than growing with new relationships. MTV shows got this down pat, with The Real World as well as Jersey Shore – where a bunch of strangers came to live in one place for a designated purpose of drama for the camera. This helped the viewer to feel like s/he was a part of this relationship.

Also, house footages  on Jersey Shore helped to add that dimension of intimacy — something K-Town also lacks. So really, watching K-Town is like watching loud and obnoxious people at a club, something I try to avoid in real life. I’ve seen obnoxious crowds before, so there’s nothing new there. But Jersey Shore gave me something more exclusive, behind-the-scenes workings of an obnoxious crowd (which I don’t get to see). This didn’t necessarily help me understand or empathize with them any more, but there have been the occasional moments of tenderness or friendship that have surprised me. I can’t say the same for K-Town, really.

So will I keep watching? Three episodes later, I remain unconvinced — but it is vacation time for me after all, so who knows?

(If you’re interested in learning more about the show, Schema has weekly updates as well as Twitter chats when new episodes air every Wednesday.)

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by RK on August 12, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in asian-americans, stereotypes, television

Posted by RK on August 12, 2012

http://jroselkim.wordpress.com/2012/08/12/k-town-reality-show-aint-no-jersey-shore/

A Call for Asian-Canadian feminism

I’m at Kickaction today, participating in the site’s annual Blogging Carnival. The recent emergence of Asian Americans/Asian Canadians as being vaguely “threatening” inspired me to write about the need to push back – especially in the form of Asian American and Asian Canadian feminism. Read about it here, if you’re so inclined.

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by RK on February 21, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in anti-racism, asian-americans, asian-canadians, feminism

Posted by RK on February 21, 2012

http://jroselkim.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/a-call-for-asian-canadian-feminism/

Accès-Asie Festival Review | Dance-X Tour

Accès-Asie Festival continued its popular run as Tangente showcased a diverse and provocative set of dance numbers by choreographers from Montréal, Seoul and Tokyo. The three-day run drew in a packed house on all three nights, with a sold-out show on its opening night on Friday, May 20th.

The first act of the Dance-X Tour lineup was the Montreal debut of Erin Flynn’s “From ashes Comes the Day,” with George Santos as a collaborator, a meditation on people’s relationships with things around them and the powerful (and destructive) emotional attachment to objects.

As the lights slowly came on stage, audience members were greeted by the stage resembling a home in disarray, with the thump thump thump sounds of Santos repeatedly striking himself with a fully stuffed cloth bag, sitting on a chair with his back to the audience. The emotional intensity was conveyed through the expressive movements of the dancers, as well as the ambient music and the atmospheric lighting throughout. Through various costume changes that ranged from glittery party dresses, pajama tops and glittery headdresses, the whole piece seemed to be a meditation on how inanimate objects come to animate our existence and our relationships.

The over-abundance of the stage was contrasted by the minimalist tone of the second – and my favorite – piece, “Transforming View” by the Korean duo Park Young-Cool and In Jung-Ju. Conceived in 2007, the act was a stunningly synchronized movement of two bodies pushing themselves to their absolute limits. Clad in all-white costumes on a stage with no props, the duo transfixed the audience’s attention to only their movements by starting with a series of deliberate jumps that vibrated through the floors.

As their bodies started in perfect synchronicity and strayed from it with many repetitions, the dance was a reminder of the human yearning for the perfect symmetry and the absolute impossibility of it, as each repetition moved further and further away from it. But what made the piece so memorable was the dancers’ ability to make me, the observer, recognize that the act of striving for that impossible ideal is a beauty in itself, as I witnessed each pant and each groan from the dancers with light-heartedness and joy.

The closing portion of the night was Tokyo dancer Maki Morishita’s Koshitsu (Tokyo Flat). In Japanese, “Kohitsu” has a double signification, meaning both a “private bedroom” as well as “persistence” depending on the kanji script it’s written in. From this word-play, Morishita’s piece emerged as a whimsically postmodern commentary on heavily regimented modern lifestyles, and how those limitations and repetitions can create a surprising burst of creativity.

Opening with the cacophonous mix of Ella Fitzgerald and techno music, Morishita began dancing outside of the spotlight, then coming into the audience’s view to deliberately delineate her “spotlight” space with a chalk. Morishita’s use of space and props was the most unconventional and experimental of the night, as she was the only one to divide the expansive stage space (one of the deepest I had ever seen), as if to reflect the double entendre of the title of her piece. Incorporating mundane objects like a Kleenex box and a water bottle, she invoked her past life as a receptionist at an office who often had to battle the monotony of day with her own rhythm and dance.

Even though the inspiration and the origin of the dances were diverse, they weaved a common thread of human struggle – the struggle of letting ourselves and our things go, the struggle of having our bodies conform to the rhythm and the pace of our choice, and the struggle to keep our bodies alert through the restricted increments of time. For the hour and a half in the intimate space of the Tangente studio, the cultural and personal differences disappeared for a second to unite common struggles of humanity in the most unexpected and innovative way.

[[In Jung-Su and Park Young-Cool - image from Accès-Asie's Press Release. This post originally appeared on Schema Magazine's website]

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by RK on June 1, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in asian-americans, dance

Posted by RK on June 1, 2011

http://jroselkim.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/acces-asie-festival-review-dance-x-tour/

What I’m listening to: Das Racist

This will make me sound dreadfully unhip, but I’ll admit it: I’m not really a music person. This is for two reasons: one, when given a choice I will always choose a podcast over a song; two, I am one of those obsessive people who listens to a same album for 6+ months until I cannot listen to it anymore.

But here’s one group I’ve been listening to the past….2 months or so.

Some think Das Racist is a joke, and you might agree, if you listen to their (more well-known) hits like this:

But I think that amidst the incessant reference to getting high and going to White Castle and Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, there’s a really irreverent and critical commentary toward racial politics in America at work. “Chicken and Meat” certainly does that, with lyrics like “Banana Republic/which one’s Dominican?/ wait, who’s the Indian? / who you callin’ pickaninny?” The inability of the white mainstream to tell minorities apart, as well as the commercialization of ethnic “cool”ness (explored most explicitly in “Who’s that? Brooown!”) are both hilarious and poignant.

Wikipedia cites an interview where Himanshu Suri (“Heems”) explaining the origin of the name:

“I think being minorities at a liberal arts college and that type of environment had an impact on both the way we view race and our sense of humor, which people often use as a tool to deal with race.  I always felt like Wonder Showzen was a television show that captured that type of thing perfectly. When I saw the little kid yelling “THAT’S RACIST” it blew my mind. And then it became a game … to take all the seriousness out of making legitimate commentary on race, because that can get very annoying. So when something veering on racially insensitive would pop off in a commercial on television or something it would be like, who could yell “That’s Racist” first.”

So give them a listen, would ya?

1 Comment
by RK on May 23, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in asian-americans, music, race politics

Posted by RK on May 23, 2011

http://jroselkim.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/what-im-listening-to-das-racist/

Why I’ve been silent

Sorry for the unexpected blogging silence, folks. May has been an unexpectedly busy month. I’m wrapping up one job and transitioning into other various things. Oh, and I’m also taking a French course, which is currently kicking my butt. This is my thought process in every class so far: Le subjonctif??? 

I’m also currently reading a book to review for the upcoming edition of Montreal Review of Books. If you can get your hands on the latest spring issue (the website only shows the Fall 2010 issue), I have a review there as well, of H. Nigel Thomas’s short story collection Lives: Whole and Otherwise. 

Anyway. All this activity overload is a serious drain to my blogging energy. I see and read interesting and provocative stuff on the internet all the time, like the Paper Tigers piece by Wesley Yang, or this anti-racist critique of the recent phenomena of SlutWalks – but I find myself lacking the time or the mind-space to think of a coherent response. And it frustrates me that I don’t have the discipline to do something I enjoy doing, and it humbles me to think that others who have full-time employment and family are able to keep up with everyday blogging.

But I have been thinking a lot about my own place in this society – in a city where the binary energy is mostly spent on the anglophone/francophone divide, where my estranged-ness seems more pronounced than ever. And of course, reading the pieces I linked to above have propelled me to think more critically about my orientation (geographically and culturally).

So, this is a long-winded way of saying that I will be back with more substantial comment/content. In the meantime, here’s bell hooks speaking ever so eloquently and thoughtfully about rap music:


6 Comments
by RK on May 17, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in asian-americans, personal, race politics, writing
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Posted by RK on May 17, 2011

http://jroselkim.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/why-ive-been-silent/

Women In Art: Sueyeun Juliette Lee on using poetry as investigation & publishing innovative multiethnic voices

[This interview originally appeared on Kickaction.ca]

Sueyeun Juliette Lee is a poet, publisher, and literature educator who is currently based in Philadelphia. I was first introduced her by May-lee Chai, and fell first in love with her words (you can listen to her reading some of her poems here) and her publishing house that publishes beautiful chapbooks. In our conversation, Lee told me all about the authors she’s published, her liminal sense of belonging as a Korean American, as well as her favourite women of colour writers.

Can you describe your writing style in 3 words?

Inquisitive. Spacious. On.

Whose poetry has influenced your own?

A friend introduced me to Myung Mi Kim’s work when I started to take poetry seriously, in an “I think I might be an artist” kind of way. When I sat down with Under Flag, my head just blew up. POETRY CAN DO THIS! I remember screaming to myself inside. I felt so *addressed* by her. We’re both Korean Americans, and I had never read a book that included me–that spoke the story of my family–so well. She so poignantly captures the devastation of war. It’s a horrible legacy to have inside one’s bloodstream. Sadly, too many of us share this fact. For me at the time, this family history lay like a dark bruise on my spirit. And Kim’s work hurt me, pushed on that bruise, but also made the old blood well up to the surface to be expunged. To breathe. To speak. Her writing changed my life. She helped me touch something I didn’t have the capacity to allow myself to consider at the time.

Reading Mei Mei Berssenbrugge’s book Empathy almost made me give up writing. I remember thinking–THIS IS IT. She has done exactly what I had wished to do and so much better than I could have ever done it. It was immense. I was so moved and so personally devastated at the same time. But I kept going somehow. And in some ways, it was a GOOD thing for me to be so humbled by someone else’s work. It forced me to move in other directions, to explore other possibilities.

Among my peers, I feel myself in the spiritual company of writers such as Cara Benson, Brenda Iijima, Douglas Kearney, Craig Santos Perez, and Tisa Bryant.

When I was younger, I was obsessed with John Donne, Shakespeare, and Milton. Seriously. I can still recite some of their poetry by heart. They have such an intensity and inventiveness about their work that stands up to the test of time.

Can you tell me a little bit about your publishing house, Corollary Press?

Corollary Press is a chapbook series devoted to multi-ethnic, innovative writing. I’ve released 10 titles so far. All the books are hand-sewn, in small editions of 150, many of them with letter-pressed covers, and all of them are quite beautiful!

I’ve published some amazing work. It’s delirious to me that I get to put out books like Jai Arun Ravine’s This is January, or Brandon Shimoda’s Lake M. These are amazing writers, people who are truly in pursuit of the unsayable in their work–and they capture SOMETHING so alive, rich, and vital! It’s challenging writing that I feel makes me a more vibrant and engaged spirit for having read it. Truly. So, Corollary is the way I can help share this work with the world. It is my humble (but necessary!) intervention into our social psyches, a way of making us pause and re-consider history, beauty, relationships, landscape, memory, being, etc.

It’s important for me to promote and support innovative ethnic writing because I hate to see reductive cliches continue to circulate about Asian-ness or black-ness or “differences” generally. My authors are bad “representatives” because they challenge and question these types, they complicate the texture of ethnic identity and being. It is precisely their “badness” that I love!

You’ve written a lot of poems about Korea – both the North Korean conflict, as well as the precarious position of South Korea. How does your identity as a Korean-American influence your position on Korea, as well as poetry?

Because my parents grew up during the Korean War, they didn’t like to talk about their childhoods. There are lots of very sad stories from that period in their lives. Being orphaned, losing family members, being hungry, terrified, ill, lost, uncertain. They had good reason to not want to speak of those things with their young children. They were also very focused on making sure that me and my siblings could succeed here. They didn’t push us to speak Korean or keep Korean holidays or traditions, like Chuseok or saebeh. This is not to say that we were totally assimilated. I always KNEW I was Korean, but WHAT that meant was rather fuzzy to me.

As I got older, I became more interested in this heritage. WHAT does it mean to be Korean? Well, I can never know that because I’m Korean American. But what does it mean to be Korean American? That was an intensely complicated question for me. And a lot of my earlier writing was about trying to figure this out. What it meant to me to have an ethnic heritage, to be living in a neo-colonial metropole, to have these questions and to have imperfect access to the tools that might help me answer them–well, that query became the basis of my poetry practice. So, poetry to me is an investigative means through which I can create some shadow of understanding. And my understanding is always changing, so the poetry does, too.

I have a great fondness for Korea. It’s a mythic place for me. An Elsewhere. It’s a dark star in the sky, my stomach up in the clouds. I long for it, I’ll never have it, I love it, I don’t know it. Korea is alive and transforming just as I am alive and transforming. It’s a landscape, an ethos, a culture, an economy, a history, many histories. You can see why I return to it so regularly in my writing.

Who are some great women of colour authors you would recommend to Kickaction readers?

THERE ARE SO MANY! Aside from the ones I named earlier–Wang Ping, Duriel Harris, Prageeta Sharma, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Tamiko Beyer, Kimiko Hahn, Sawako Nakayasu, Evie Shockley, Cathy Park Hong, Barbara
Jane Reyes, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Le Thi Diem Thuy, May-lee Chai, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Divya Victor, Lynn Xu, Bhanu Kapil, Renee Gladman, Tonya Foster…

–
You can find more of Lee’s work and words on her blog.

2 Comments
by RK on April 19, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in asian-americans, Korea, literature, women in art
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Posted by RK on April 19, 2011

http://jroselkim.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/women-in-art-sueyeun-juliette-lee-on-using-poetry-as-investigation-publishing-innovative-multiethnic-voices/

Links Roundup: awesome (but excluded) female artists, and problematic beliefs in Mississippi

During the last couple of weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of profiling Montreal’s own fine poets for the “Women In Art” Q&A series. Oana Avasilichioaei is a Montreal-based poet who founded and curated the Atwater Poetry Project from 2003 to 2008, bringing poets from all over Canada and the United States. The second conversation features Branka Petrovic, who started writing poetry during her undergrad years at McGill, and continued her journey into poetry with an MA in Creative Writing and English Literature at Concordia University.

Meet Magda O: photographer extraordinaire, DJ, and feminist scholar who is researching on women electronic artists (she will soon be relocating to Montreal from her native Toronto to start a Ph.D. at Concordia. Yes!) The stats she posted some startling stats on how many (or how few) women participate in electronic music festivals for a documentary she’s working on caught my eye this week. Bottom line: things aren’t looking good for women electronic artists.

Amy Mihyang, a Korean-American writer now living in Seoul, is performing her one-woman play “between” about her life as an adoptee of American parents. Her birth parents – she reunited with them 6 years ago – will also be attendance. I wish I was in Seoul to catch this.

According to a recent PPP Poll, almost half of Mississippi Republican voters not only believe that interracial marriage is immoral, but also believe it should be illegal. In 2011.

4 Comments
by RK on April 10, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in art, asian-americans, Korea, politics, racism, sexism, women in art
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Posted by RK on April 10, 2011

http://jroselkim.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/links-roundup-awesome-but-excluded-female-artists-and-problematic-beliefs-in-mississippi/

Links Friday – Ask an Abortion Provider, Feminist Fashion Bloggers & Amérasia Film Fest

Here’s frank, funny and compelling account of a female abortion provider, answering questions about her job and the the motivations behind her career choice.

Of Another Fashion is a blog chronicling the fashion histories of women of colour in the U.S. Yes, it’s as awesome as it sounds.

Montreal cinema lovers: Ciné-Asie’s Amérasia Film Festival showcases 20+ great films from directors of Asian descent. I will be covering the event and reviewing films for Schema Magazine. Come out if you can, or read all about it online.

The Feminist Fashion Bloggers had their first group post event on March 2, where each blogger answered the question, “who is your feminist fashion icon?” The links roundup of everyone’s answers – including mine, if you haven’t yet – is here.

1 Comment
by RK on March 4, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in asian-americans, asian-canadians, blogs, choice, fashion, feminism, films, links friday
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Posted by RK on March 4, 2011

http://jroselkim.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/links-friday-ask-an-abortion-provider-feminist-fashion-bloggers-amerasia-film-fest/

Binna Kim | A Story of an American Tragedy and Survival

[originally posted on Schema Magazine]

Photo by Elizabeth Kim, from KoreAm Magazine

On April 6, 2006, Binna Kim woke up in a pool of her own blood. It would later turn out that she would be the only survivor in a mass infanticide and matricide committed by her own father. After writing a suicide note to his church pastor, Sang In Kim shot his own family members with a .25-calibre semiautomatic, and took his own life afterwards. Kim survived the shooting because the bullet in her head had hit a thick bone right behind her ear instead of entering deeper into her brain. During her recovery, the whole story of her family’s tragedy was kept from her in fear of hindering her recovery, only to be cruelly exposed to her by an investigating police officer.

But this story does not end in tragedy. Binna, who was told by doctors she would never be able to walk again, is slowly conquering her limp. She’s finishing up college with good grades. She even has found it in her heart to “forgive her father,” as she tells KoreAm magazine.

Recently, South Korea has garnered some notoriety in Western media as a suicide capital of the developed world. Kim’s tragedy was paired with 5 other cases of murder-suicides in Korean-American homes in southern California at the same time. Men who are faced with debt they cannot pay (or legal scrutiny, as was the case for the former president Roh Mu-Hyun) see suicide as an “honourable” option.

The brutality of Binna’s story also highlights the differing cultural pressures, and the lack of support for first-generation immigrants, especially the men. Sang In Kim left the suicide note to his church pastor, but how intimate was this relationship? Could he confide in him about his money troubles? It seems unlikely he ever sought (or could seek) professional counselling, especially as someone who entered the U.S. with an illegally obtained visa. Health care is still a contentious issue for the U.S., and access to mental health resources remain scarce due to its often exorbitant costs. Places like the Korean American Family Service Centre exist to build the bridge between the newly arrived immigrant families and their new surroundings.

On top of that, seeking counselling is still seen as a sign of weakness in Korean society, where confessing to having troubles is seen as worse than taking one’s own life. Binna Kim describes her father’s attitude as often withdrawn and “constantly stressed.”

There needs to be a culture change, where discussion – and seeking help where you need it most – is no longer stigmatized as weak, but as a necessary step for rebuilding one’s roots in a foreign land. Binna’s courage to tell her story should serve as a reminder, and the beginning of that change.

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by RK on February 3, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in asian-americans, health, Korea
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Posted by RK on February 3, 2011

http://jroselkim.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/binna-kim-a-story-of-an-american-tragedy-and-survival/

Not all Chinese parents are the same

Dear Amy Chua,

I’ve been really rattled by your article, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.” And judging from the comments section, I’m not alone.

First, you admit that you are using the term “Chinese parent” loosely:

“I know some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish and Ghanaian parents who qualify too. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I’m also using the term “Western parents” loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.”

Okay, fine. But then you continue to wrongly use the words “Chinese parents” in your entire article, instead of individualizing your own experiences, or perhaps some Chinese parents you know. Is it too hard to give these people a name, or at least acknowledge people’s individuality? Apparently it is.

So you are exemplifying the classic move where one person of colour represents everyone in that “group.” While admitting that setting up binaries is inaccurate, you continue to do so in your entire article, thus perpetuating stereotypes about the shrill, emotionless Chinese parents while also reinforcing the wishy-washy Western parents stereotype. (even though you state at the beginning that you know such stereotypes are not all true.) You can’t say that you know the dangers of stereotypes and then move on to reinforce them.

I also wonder why you keep using the word “Chinese” parents, and fail to acknowledge the difference between a “Chinese” parent, and a “Chinese-American” parent. I wish you could’ve perhaps explored this difference further, because I can’t help but think that 2nd-or 3rd-generation Chinese-Americans who were born here may be different. Some Chinese-Americans have been living in America for a long time now. What are their stories? Could you not find a single 3rd-generation parent who was willing to share his/her story of bringing up children? When I read an article – in a respected publication like the Wall Street Journal nonetheless – I expect to see some kind of journalistic practices like concrete research, some differing perspectives, and maybe some interviews. Your article has none of these things – just some unknown studies with no source , countless anecdotes about your own family, and some more generalizations about how in the end, the Chinese parents produce the best children. How odd. How disappointing.

Let me recount the days of my teenage years. My parents, who immigrated here over 10 years ago, had high expectations for me as well. As a teenager who was confused about her identity, I did experience a lot of conflict and resented my parents (and the unreal expectations they put on me). But you know what? They were also human, not the caricatures of parents you described in your article. They let me major in English Literature because I wanted to. They let me quit my violin lessons because I didn’t like it.

But most importantly, I didn’t grow up thinking that all Korean parents were like my own. Because they are not. I also saw plenty of my “Western” friends suffer from the parents’ pressure to go into engineering/law school/medical school because their parents had the same profession and they wouldn’t expect their children to do anything else.

However, according to you, Western parents don’t do that:

“Western parents try to respect their children’s individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions, supporting their choices, and providing positive reinforcement and a nurturing environment. By contrast, the Chinese believe that the best way to protect their children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they’re capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits and inner confidence that no one can ever take away.”

I still fail to see how an action like this can instill confidence in a child:

“I threatened her [Chua's daughter] with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn’t do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.”

I don’t think you can excuse this behaviour as being “cultural.” Nobody knows their parents as well as the children, so I’m withholding judgment, but this anecdote does make you seem like a bullying parent with issues. So please, do not drag an entire nation of parents with you. This issue of unreal expectations is yours to figure out, and yours alone.

Maybe, if you approached this article with a more nuanced approach about class – do upper-middle class parents tend to pressure their children into certain types of activities and professions, compared to those belonging to socioeconomically challenged groups? – then perhaps this article wouldn’t have become so problematic.

You say that the Chinese parents are the best in the world. But it sure doesn’t sound like it until I read your statement telling me so. And unfortunately, I fear that people without Chinese parents will just wonder how crazy those Chinese parents are after reading your piece. And those of us with Chinese (or other Asian parents, because the distinction still doesn’t really exist in our society) will just end up cringing at the problematic lumping of the “Chinese” parents like there’s some magical personality binding agent in our DNAs, even across the continent!

And for that, I feel deeply disappointed.

5 Comments
by RK on January 8, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in asian-americans, parenting, stereotypes
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Posted by RK on January 8, 2011

http://jroselkim.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/not-all-chinese-parents-are-the-same/

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