The award-winning poet Ocean Vuong spoke the following chilling words on Glennon Doyle’s podcast, We Can Do Hard Things, about the plight of Asian Americans today: “If we are visible at all, we are visible as a corpse.”
While I refuse to take those words literally, I understand why he said them. He made his remark in reference to the rising xenophobia and violence directed toward Asian Americans—particularly elderly women—during the pandemic. Vuong asks the questions “Why do you have to read our stories in order to value us enough not to kill us? Why do you have to read eight Asian books in order to say, ‘Now I realize how valuable they are to us’?”
Part of the answer rests with Asian invisibility.
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In mainstream writings, “Asian American invisibility” manifests in a variety of different ways. For example, consider the following stereotypes about Asian American individuals, steeped in the model-minority myth, foreign objectification and other ways we are glibly and carelessly pigeonholed.
- Asian Americans have successfully assimilated, as evidenced by their achievements and contributions to the American way of life.
- Asian Americans are good at math.
- Asian American students are hardworking and high-achieving.
Invisibility is a byproduct of society assigning blanket assumptions to an otherwise heterogeneous group of people. Those statements are more than simply problematic—they are gross and often inaccurate generalizations. (For counternarratives, see here, here, here and here, among many others.)
In fact, I dislike the very term “Asian American” and use it reluctantly while assuming a shared understanding of its limitations, because it collectivizes a diverse group of individuals into a container of sameness. Using this label discounts the social, cultural and…
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