From Kimberly N on Flickr

Danny Chau wrote a personal reflection on Jeremy Lin in an article referenced by ESPN
today. Many props to ESPN for linking to a piece of writing not overtly about sports. In it he characterized Lin as the reconciliation of old-school Asian values and American individualism:

Jeremy Lin has done this, and it’s why he’s so important. He proves there’s another way. Watching Lin knife into the lane and score over soaring giants, it’s impossible to imagine him doing anything else with his life. But it could have been so different. His entire basketball career prior to this remarkable week has been a cyclical routine of underappreciation and invisibility. He could have left it all. We know about his Harvard degree in economics. But he had the courage and resolve to stick to his dream. And that’s where the ethnocentrism melts away and the purity of his story emerges.

I found it interesting and a bit disheartening to see how all the complexities of identity and culture can be so easily distilled into this convenient Ivy-League-application-essay worthy narrative about honoring tradition and finding your own route. Chau, in praising Lin for becoming the symbol for generations of Asian Americans, is covertly illuminating the hidden frustrations of an American subculture. So many of us have our hopes pinned on the success of a single underdog because we see in his struggles some semblance of our own trials in life as ethnic minorities. But to declare Lin’s triumphs as the model path to self-actualization is to caricature the diversity of culture amongst Asian Americans.

It is hard to dispute that much of the rhetoric around a Harvard underdog rising to the level of a NBA point guard adheres to, or at the very least, gives nod to the model minority stereotype (the way Chau’s piece does). Here is a Taiwanese-American Christian kid from Palo Alto who overcomes all this adversity and overt racism through hard work and determination to become an awesome baller. It may be that basketball is not a stereotypical “Asian” activity the way SAT-studying is but from the way media announcers have been talking about Lin, they seem to be one and the same. Not a day goes by without a sportscaster opining about the “court intelligence” that Lin has and the way he is a humble team player. The bit about him coming from Harvard gets talked about once every five minutes.

Call it a reflection of my inner insecurities but it sure feels like people are fitting Lin into the convenient guide to how minorities can succeed in America. If you want to succeed in something people of your color aren’t expected to succeed in: work hard, endure racist jeering (which would never be overly tolerated if used against an athlete of another color), deal with setbacks and underestimations of your ability at every level of competition, and wait for your big break when somebody finally notices you.

I am not railing against Jeremy. Part of me is immensely proud that an Asian American has finally broken through this artificial color-culture barrier in the NBA. Jeremy is his own man and he has every right to be proud of what he has done.

Yet, part of me wishes America’s renewed attention towards the Asian Amercians who live in its midst wouldn’t take on the tone of perpetuating age-old model-minority stereotypes. The dialogue has to move beyond “reconciling tradition and individualism” to become something more nuanced. Just as there are Asian Americans who live every day forced to confirm or abandon their traditions, there must be many more who delineate themselves along other spectrums of culture, be they political, religious, or economic. Jeremy Lin should be the start and not the end of a longer process of discovering the artists, writers, activists, and politicians who all have a hand in shaping our society in different ways.

Posted by: Rui

February 12, 2012 at 4:07 pm

3 COMMENTS

Cover photo from GoodReads.com

I’ve been on a book-reading marathon lately… 3 books finished in a month. These are more books than I read in the months leading up to August. While the first two works of nonfiction (The Dirty Life, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks) had been special in their own little ways, it has been a while since I’ve been so thoroughly engrossed and disturbed by a novel like Never Let Me Go.

Be warned. I make no apologies here for spoiling the story for the lot of you who haven’t read the book. This entry isn’t supposed to be a review so much as a critical analysis. If you intend to read the novel at some point, don’t read what I have to say. Just head on over to the Kindle bookstore and download a copy. There’s no point in wasting time.

Disclaimer aside, I’d like to just give my thoughts on some of the themes and motifs of Kazuo Ishiguro’s little masterpiece.

Our invisible boundaries of ignorance

Margaret Atwood wrote in her review of the book in Slate:

One motif at the very core of Never Let Me Go is the treatment of out-groups, and the way out-groups form in-groups, even among themselves.

One of Ishiguro’s most salient themes throughout the book came by the way he contrasted the microcosmic student universe of Hailsham with the wider world. Where the boarding school had its cliques and groups of outcasts, the greater society to which it barely belonged saw Hailsham itself as the place for outcasts.

Many reviewers asked why the Hailsham students didn’t run, so as to match the happy endings of other dystopian novels. This omission isn’t so much a mistake on Ishiguro’s part as much as deliberate commentary on the invisible bubble we all live in. The students did not run because they could not run… or rather, could not conceive of running. To them, the only freedom they had came by way of permission from the Madame, which was freedom granted, not taken. In this sense, Ishiguro makes the claim that though our reality is shaped by personal decision, those decisions cannot transgress the circumstances through which they have been informed.

In the end, the students had been misled by lies to such a degree whereby even their hopes (to have life extended a few more years) come off as pathetic and inconsequential. Pondering this theme, I was reminded of the stories of China’s Yangtze River farmers who, faced with the destruction of their livelihoods and community, haggled with local officials over the money paid for relocation. As one commentator noted, by having the downtrodden focus on the inconsequential challenges of daily life, the authorities can avoid a revolution.

Life is the journey, not the destination

Miss Emily and Miss Lucy played to these dueling viewpoints. Miss Lucy, in all her desire to tell the students what they should’ve learned all long, represented the idea that life only has meaning if our fate (our destination) is free to choose. What was the point of living such bucolic, carefree childhoods if the students were to be tricked into donating their vital organs after leaving Hailsham? Was it moral to help the children avoid the greater truth of donations in order to give them a childhood?

Miss Emily seemed to think so. In a message reminiscent of carnivorous but humane animal rights activists promoting cage-free grazing for cows, Miss Emily believes that despite a shortened life, every minute of a clone’s life could be lived to the fullest. She claimed it was Hailsham who gave them a life worth living, even if it meant the truth had to be hidden for so long.

Material possessions

Many of the book’s passages describe the events surrounding Sales and Exchanges, the only places where students may acquire material possessions. On the other hand, there is little description of the characters’ physical appearances… and even less about their bodies. This again, was not an accident.

Ishiguro drew focus to the books, cassettes, paintings, and puzzles as these were the only ways students could express themselves. They became attached to worldly objects, the inanimate trinkets which could survive when their own bodies couldn’t. Because the students did not really possess their bodies, objects were the only way they could maintain a tenuous bond to the world, even if the world they witnessed was but a shell of all that was hidden from them.

–

Needless to say, I really enjoyed Never Let Me Go. The prose was difficult and tedious to read at times. Yet when it was all over, the novel left behind so many questions to ponder. It is the mark of great science fiction to alter reality just enough so as to illuminate the fundamental parts of being human.

Posted by: Rui

September 12, 2011 at 9:35 pm

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First page of Ikea's Freden assembly instructions

Konie and I hit up the quintessential young adult furniture store last week: Ikea. If you’ve never been 20-something, cheap, and in need of furnishing a one-bedroom apartment, you’ve never been to Ikea. For the other 95% of us who’ve learned to work, sleep, and play on pulp-recycled wood, Ikea is a godsend.

It is not every year a young couple goes to Ikea. Most of the time, unsoft, non-cushiony shit can be picked up from your friendly Craigslist neighbor. But for mattresses, couches, and chairs (basically anything you’d put part of your body on), how could you trust that the last owner wiped his ass clean and remembered to wash the sheets every month? You can’t.

Last Sunday, we rented out a Toyota Tacoma ZipCar for 24-hours and drove the 40 minutes to Ikea Stoughton. Stoughton is a furniture town in every sense of the word. It’s as if a cottage industry sprung up around Ikea so that whenever a shopper couldn’t find a piece in white, black, or dark brown, she’d just try again in one of the other dozen furniture stores.

At Ikea, we wandered up the down the aisles, lying on every mattress, opening every drawer, feeling the texture of every fabric before taking our long list of pencil-etched aisle/bin pairs down to the ground floor … where the hard work of loading up factory-packed cardboard boxes began.

Ikea is genius in that way. The 2nd and 3rd floors are purely aspirational. “Weww, you think that media center would go well with our bookcase?” Once you’re done touring and are ready to go, they lead you to the ground floor, which is as close to hell as you’d ever get in a furniture store. “Goddd, the media center comes in 4 large boxes … and we still have to put it together!”

At the end of our struggle picking up 10+ boxes filled with the appendages of a desk, a queen-sized bed, coffee tables, a money tree, and dozens of “necessities”, we realized even a pickup truck was not enough to carry all this plus a mattress and a sofa-bed. We’d have to make another trip.

We drove home, unloaded the ridiculously heavy boxes, argued about where to put them, drank some water, then drove back to Stoughton. At this point, both of us were exhausted and cranky.

It was 45 minutes before closing time when we got the mattress and started waiting on the sofa bed in the furniture pickup area. (reserved for special items) For the next hour, we sat there among screaming toddlers and impatient college kids and feasted on 50-cent hot dogs (how??), medium-sized soda, and pizza that tasted like it came out of an elementary school cafeteria. At the end of the hour, I was bewildered by how the employees could force us to wait so long for something that would’ve taken them 10 minutes to fetch.

When we finally got the piece, it came in 4 gigantic boxes piled up so high Yao Ming couldn’t see his way over the cart. I cried in despair.

Just then, the pickup area girl said that if I didn’t want to bring it home myself, delivery was only $59. I was like … are you screwing with me or do you just feel sorry for me? Neither. It turns out Ikea delivery is a flat $59 for unlimited items anywhere in the Boston metro area.

I felt as if a vengeful deity had been laughing at me all these years. For my last 3 apartments, I’ve rented trucks and UHauled all this shit by hand. Now they were telling me I could’ve paid less than the rental to have stronger men do it for me? Sigh … lesson learned.

Once I recover from the trauma of putting together all this furniture and getting my new place in shape, I’ll post some pictures.

Posted by: Rui

August 16, 2011 at 9:14 pm

3 COMMENTS