Deconstructing the Model-Minority Myth
By Emiko Jean
I remember the first time a teacher assumed I was good at math. I was in the third grade, standing in front of my teacher’s desk as she reviewed my work—a tiny strip of paper on which a multiplication table had been printed. I’d filled it out the best I could, scratching down the answers with a prized mechanical pencil (they were all the rage those days). Her disappointment was palpable. She frowned at the paper, then at me. “I’m surprised,” she said, placing the strip facedown. “I thought you’d score higher.” I walked back to my desk, humiliated.
After the incident in third grade, I became hyper-aware of the expectations placed on me because of how I looked. Pin straight black hair, yellow skin, and eyes that flared upward were associated with being good at math, musically inclined, studious, and above all, hardworking. I grew up in a majority white community, and the narrative of the straight-A, model-minority, Asian-American student permeated my young life.
Forget the fact that the model-minority myth ignores diversity within the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. Forget the fact that it forces AAPI to live within an unrealistic standard. Instead, focus on the impact—the feeling of suppression, and that third-grade child who sat at her desk trying not to cry. I was angry and confused but couldn’t bring myself to contextualize it. Instead, I let the myth consume me. I forced myself to be quiet.
When you don’t fit into the box that has been built around you, it creates an existential crisis. Who was I if I was not good at math? Who was I if I did not play the violin? Who was I if I preferred to read lazily than pore over a textbook? Nobody. Not enough. This caused a rebellion of sorts. In middle school, I was suspended multiple times. In high school, I failed most of my freshman year. I spent a lot of time doing nothing and feeling very angry and inadequate. But mute, too. I had been actively encouraged by society not to express myself.
When you don’t fit into the box that has been built around you, it creates an existential crisis.
My novel Mika in Real Life is partially inspired by my experiences grappling with the model-minority myth. Mika is a thirty-something woman whose life is far from successful. Struggling with her self-worth, she invents an elaborate false life to impress her daughter. Mika’s problems stem from other factors, too: an unhappy, insatiable mother and a traumatic experience in college. But the model-minority myth and its unrealistic expectations shaped Mika’s character, as it shaped my life.
We are both women who defied the model minority while simultaneously internalizing it, grappling with the duality of feeling inadequate and aching to take up space. I still struggle with it. In my everyday life, I often feel small. I’m not sure if that can ever be fully undone. But maybe that’s why I have fiction, to write heroines like Mika who break down the box in which they are confined, who unlearn the lessons from my own childhood.
++
Emiko Jean is the author of Tokyo Dreaming, Tokyo Ever After, Empress of all Seasons, We'll Never be Apart, and most recently, Mika in Real Life. When Emiko is not writing, she is reading. Most of her friends are imaginary. Before she became a writer she was an entomologist (fancy name for bug catcher), a candle maker, a florist, and a teacher. She lives in Washington with her husband and children (unruly twins). She loves the rain.
Listen to her episode on Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books here.