Family and Class

It is fitting that student stories begin with the family. During college years, students may taste freedom from their parents and family home — often the strongest ties to their ethnicity — for the first time in their lives (Min and Kim 2000: 743). Yet, as the voices in this chapter illustrate, freedom does not always mean disjuncture: stories of family not only shape the core of many student lives, but also serve as the foil for future selves.

Given the diversity inherent in the category of "Asian American" though, a topic explored in greater detail in chapter 2, family inevitably comes in many shapes and forms, especially in terms of immigration and class. A substantial majority (74 percent) of Asian American adults as a whole are foreign born, but ethnic groups differ in the proportion constituted by recent immigrants (Goyette and Xie 1999: 25; Pew Research Center 2013). In contrast to the working-class origins of many Asian immigrants who arrived in the late nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries as contract laborers, many Asian immigrants arriving after 1965 are highly educated and held white-collar and professional careers in their home countries or arrived as refugees (Kibria 1998: 947; Zhou and Xiong 2005: 1127). While Japanese, Chinese, South Asian, and Filipino American family incomes may surpass that of whites on one hand, Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, and Hmong American families have high poverty rates on the other (Goyette and Xie 1999: 23–24). Such differences in immigrant generation and class situate families disparately and differentially, hinted by student stories in their personal observations of the range of socioeconomic backgrounds of Asian American students at Harvard.

As such, the stereotypes of the homogenizing model minority myth regarding family and class — such as familial piety and economic success (i.e., middle- to upper-class status) — inevitably gloss over the complex lived reality of Asian American students. For example, some students like Mattias Arendt share stories of commonly held "Asian values" of hard work, duty, and obedience promoted by parents and grandparents (and thus potentially reinforcing racialized stereotypes). Others like Joanna Lu refuse narratives of simple top-down ingraining and facile acceptance of such values. Lu asserts that while she shares her parents' values and plans to transmit those same values to future generations, she nonetheless remains true to herself. She reflexively and actively seeks to find her own place, accepting the values of her parents, but only as a basis for her personal, evolving narrative.

By contrast, another student, Nancy Lim, describes how the values of her upbringing act as a restriction on her personal autonomy, presenting a "narrow path of obedience." Lim, like many other Asian Americans born and raised in the United States with Asian immigrant parents, struggles to balance both her Asian family values and mainstream Western values (Lee, Su, and Yoshida 2005: 389). Here, as elsewhere, the mother provides the fulcrum of both love and conflict. Lim acridly describes her relationship with her mother as one between a creator and the created product: the created owes everything to the creator, but at what point might the created be allowed the freedom to truly leave? Lu believes her situation arises from a misapplication of Asian values in a Western context, with Asian parenting providing both a toolkit for success, as well as its very limitation.

Other narratives illustrate shades of ambivalence wrapped up in the values of their family. Hannah Cheng describes questioning and reevaluating the role of her family values and achievement itself in her identity after arriving at Harvard and taking a course on Asian American studies. By thinking through the model minority stereotype, Cheng came to see so much of herself — "that very obedient child" — within it, causing her to consider just who she was. Yet, after she questioned her mother about her heretofore venerated obedience, she was surprised to discover the nuances in her mother's response, who considered her daughter not particularly obedient or rebellious, but simply on an individual path quite different from her own. For Cheng, the problem lies less in the values of her family or views of her mother, and more in terms of the model minority myth that seeks to characterize these values as fixed and monolithic.

The narratives in this chapter also illustrate how socioeconomics can both complicate and emphasize purportedly Asian values such as hard work, duty, and filial piety, especially for recent, or children of, immigrants. For some students, the socioeconomic struggle and sacrifice of parents empower and prompt them to embrace such values, while for others struggle and sacrifice threaten to overpower personal autonomy and present the limitations of Asian values.

For example, Taryn describes the impact of her immigrant mother on her sense of duty and career aspirations. Reflecting on her mother's journey from minimum-wage waitress to manager of her own business, Taryn can only see her own life of academic achievement that led to admission to Harvard as intertwined with her mother's sacrifices and struggles. The result is both an empowering resolve to succeed, as well as an overwhelming sense of repayment, even conceptualized in monetary terms. As she concludes: "I want to make enough [money] to provide for her [mother]." She is not alone, mirroring a strong desire and responsibility felt by many Asian American offspring to pursue a financially stable and lucrative career out of respect for their parents' immigrant experiences and sacrifice (Park 2005: 112).

For others, socioeconomic sacrifice and parental struggle can weigh too heavily, threatening their own sense of personal agency. Describing life with her parents who worked hard to immigrate to America during the Cultural Revolution in China, Leah Li recalls her own life constantly framed by her father's example of hard work and self-discipline. "If you only had 10 percent of your dad's work ethic ..." became the common refrain, voiced by her mother, that kept her toeing the line. Similarly, Clarissa Lee argues that the sacrifice of her parents inevitably permeates her life and options. She avidly pursues the day when she can break free, "when my journey is no longer 'our journey.'"

Throughout many of these stories, mothers play a large role in student lives. The centrality of the mother is exactly what the Tiger Mom narrative asserts. Given the place of the mother as the emotional heart of many families in Asia — even as fathers officially occupy the heads of families in patrilineal kinship systems — this is not unexpected. However, the special place of mothers in immigrant families...