When Victimhood Culture Corrodes the Asian-American Experience

What I learned from reading Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl

I belong to a book club where all the members are Korean-American women in their 40’s or 50’s. Most were raised mostly in the US. And most are also mothers.

Our latest discussion proved to be quite enlightening. We addressed a recent memoir Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl by Hyeseung Song. The author is the same age as me so I was excited to read it — to learn how another Korean-American woman succeeded in life.

Would she have any nuggets of wisdom?

The book was well-written in the sense that it was a quick, smooth read. Song did major in creative writing at Princeton, so that level of skill should be expected. The general consensus of the book club:

“Blame blame blame. It’s all about me, me, me. I’m the victim!”

“There is no deeper reflection on her life or experiences.”

“It felt like reading the diary of a depressed teeanger.”

I don’t want to bash the book or the author. I merely want to investigate why it was written that way. Why does the messaging perfectly encapsulate an ideology promoted on liberal elite campuses and cities?

It’s important to note that Song went to Princeton for undergrad, got into Harvard Law School and stayed there for one year. Then she transferred to Harvard grad school for philosophy and ultimately left without completing her degree in order to pursue art. The accomplished artist lives and works in New York.

Although Song was born in South Korea, her family immigrated to the US when she was young. Since she grew up in Texas with few other Asians around, and she internalized a very American way of thinking. And spending her entire young adult life on liberal elite campuses and cities possibly generated a certain narrative for her.

Song even stated in interviews that she didn’t really befriend many Asians growing up or at college. She actually avoided Asians. Richard Nisbett’s book The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently and Why may shed light on the disconnect between Song and her parents.

The gist of Song’s memoir is: I felt my immigrant Korean parents didn’t love me unconditionally, so I had to achieve Ivy-league status to feel any worth. My family was a bit dysfunctional and then I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Only when I left Harvard grad school, started taking art classes in painting which was my true joy and passion, and divorced my first husband did I get on the path to “wellness.”

Sprinkle in many moments of microaggression magnification due to her race, culture, and gender, and voila, you have a published book.

Growing Up Asian in America

The key word is “felt.” She felt she wasn’t loved, but that depends on her interpretation of how a parent shows love. And I think her view is a very American/Western view, which is not necessarily best. There is a running joke that Asian immigrant parents never say “I love you.” Yes, it’s true.

It’s not in our culture to say it, but rather show it through steadfast dedication and sacrifice, which Song’s parents did. Her mom did everything to keep the family intact and above water financially. She also supported her husband in all his rags-to-riches schemes, albeit unenthusiastically.

Up until highschool graduation, my life and Song’s were very similar.

In her book, Song focuses on a few key incidents of her early life which revolved around little “t” trauma such as poverty, having immigrant parents, being one of a few Koreans in her town, and having a tiger mom. Song’s mom worked a lot so she really wasn’t in her face that much, but merely expected her daughter to excel academically. Her mom sounds just like my mom and all my Korean friends’ moms. I actually enjoyed her mom in the book, and couldn’t see a villainous side to her even though the writing was trying hard to portray her as strict and unloving.

Song’s poverty was not as extreme as Rob Henderson’s, whose memoir Troubled explores his childhood growing up in the foster care system, and occasionally living in cars. Song was basically middle class. She witnessed her parents fight a few times during her childhood years (who hasn’t?), but mom and dad stayed married until death.

Her parents even had another baby together when Song was in college. Song’s memoir was no Troubled or Educated by Tara Westover. It was clearly not a Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance either. When I read those memoirs, I thought, “Wow! So amazing. They accomplished so much despite the cards they were dealt. They really didn’t let negative events bring them down.”

And then after I get so inspired by their stories, I get a little depressed because I think, “What have I done?” Not much.

---

Related

We’re Making Troubled: The Movie!

Would I Have Survived?

---

So in that way, it’s wonderful Song’s memoir was published. I’m not nearly as courageous as she is to write in such a vulnerable way. For that she has my utmost respect. But I wish she would have emphasized different aspects of her life to show exactly how she decided to switch career paths into art. Instead, the focus seemed to be on her bipolar disorder, overdose attempts, and how everyone burned her. But maybe that’s what sells? Key words are what the algorithms propel onto the top of everyone’s feed.

My first impression upon finishing Docile was “What was the challenge? Where was her big revelation? How did she grow?” One of the book club members who happens to be a therapist offered a very gentle critique: “Maybe she is still on her growth journey. She hasn’t learned yet. Everyone has their own timeline.”

---

Also by LB

• Sexual Propaganda Comes to Young Adult Fiction: I don’t want my son reading about fragility and unhealthy sexuality

• Battle Hymn of the Homeschool Mother: How I Went from “Model Minority” to Member of the Counterculture

• Big Education Wants You to Spend Big Bucks: But is saving for college a good idea?

---

Song and Me

One key difference between Song’s life and mine — she had her mental breakdown and became suicidal while in college and grad school. I did that while in highschool.

In the early 80’s and 90’s, the 1.5 and 2nd generation Asian-Americans were pressured to be high-achievers hence the birth of the model minority stereotype. But our parents had no choice. It was to ensure our survival. My mom instilled the idea that you need the fancy diploma for validation in the US, otherwise they may see you and treat you like a bumbling idiot because that is exactly what happened to all her peers. Graduating from top schools in Korea or having a white-collar job in Korea didn’t make a lick of difference when they applied for jobs in the US with an Asian accent. So there was a good reason for all the academic pressure.

Unfortunately, that pressure has now permeated through all of middle-class American life, no matter your race. The book Life Under Pressure: The Social Roots of Youth Suicide by Anna S. Mueller and Seth Abrutyn explores this issue in depth. That book completely illustrates my life in high school.

Lucky for me smartphone-social media didn’t exist in the 90’s, so I didn’t hear of the stories where other Asian-American girls ended their own lives due to the extreme stress. If I had read about them in my depressed state, I’m positive I would have committed suicide. It would have been a “hey, if they can do it, I can too!” sort of thing.

Abigail Shirer states in her book Bad Therapy:

The virality of suicide among adolescents is extremely well-established. Risk of copycat suicide behavior is particularly high where the subject of the suicide is valorized; where talk of suicide is repetitive or excessive and can become a preoccupation among at-risk youth; where suicide is presented as a means of coping with life’s problems, and where details of methods are provided.

One of the main reasons I didn’t off myself was the fear that my mom would haunt me in the afterlife by saying “You bring such shame onto our family.” I would clearly picture her tsk-tsking me, eyes glaring with disappointment as I lay in my coffin. Eventually I chastised myself for being mentally weak and focused on graduation which meant I was a step closer to freedom.

As with Song, alcohol also helped me cope immensely in my 20’s. But don’t all 20-something girls go through the same thing? Isn’t that just life?

There is a popular holistic psychologist, Nicole LaPera, who actually lists having immigrant parents as a risk factor for trauma. She states that immigrant parents give their children “invisible trauma.” I wonder, does invisible trauma cause invisible scars, and ultimately invisible problems? Because I literally can’t see the problem. I’m sure LePera would put Docile on her book recommendation list.

Another key important difference between my depression story and Song’s — she got an official diagnosis and antidepressant meds as a young adult on one of her Ivy campuses. Although I was clearly depressed in high school, I never got a diagnosis or started meds. Mental health was a taboo subject during those years, especially in Asian families.

I honestly don’t know if this was a protective factor for me or not. I simply thought, suck it up, buttercup. Shirer points to the Harvard Grant study regarding life satisfaction. The study shows the five traits most associated with higher life satisfaction are altruism, humor, sublimation, anticipation, and suppression. Suppression is “keeping a stiff upper lip in the face of unpleasant thoughts and events.”

Funny story — I did actually see a therapist once.

It was 1995, I was 16 and away at a pre-college summer program at a prestigious college campus. When one of the advisors saw me at the local mall, I burst into tears upon greeting, and he figured I needed some help. After a long chat about chemical imbalances and that maybe my brain is just off and it’s not my fault, he set something up at the campus clinic where I met with a therapist, or maybe a therapist-in-training. It was the summer. The campus was dead besides us high school overachievers who wanted to spend six weeks of our summer vacation taking a college course.

My therapist-in-training was Korean too!

I just remember her taking lots of notes on her yellow legal pad while I cried and cried without knowing why I felt so sad. I don’t think she said anything helpful at all. It would be my last therapy session ever. After that terribly embarrassing cryfest, I decided to take action and try not to do that ever again. I left the program early and just went on with life.

I do wonder that if I had received some official diagnosis when I was young, would I have held onto it close like a security blanket? Or would it shackle me like a dead weight, keeping me from lift-off?

As for medications — that would have never happened under my mom’s roof. This is the same woman that would give me half a Tylenol when I would suffer from debilitating migraines as a teenager. I never got an official diagnosis as a migraine sufferer since I never saw a doctor about them.

I didn’t even know migraine medication existed until I was in my mid-twenties. And it wasn’t until I was forty when I thought I should start treating them because they started to hamper my quality of life. Parenting is no fun when you feel like a torpedo is rocketing through your eyeball. Wouldn’t this anecdote be even funnier if my mom was a pharmacist? Because she is.

I remember humor is one of those life-satisfaction traits. I choose to laugh at how ridiculous my mom was, doling out drugs to everyone else except her own suffering daughter. Thanks Mom. You made me one tough bitch.

There’s actually a handful of Asian-American memoirs out recently, but maybe only from a certain kind of Asian-American. For example, another memoir which I have yet to read is titled Ordinary Disasters: How I Stopped Being a Model Minority by Anne Anlin Cheng.

Take a look at Cheng’s resume — B.A. from Princeton, Masters from Stanford, Ph.D from UC Berkeley, and current professor at Princeton. I would say she is the epitome of a model minority. Will Cheng’s writing just be more eloquent complaining from her liberal campus about how life can be cruel and hard sometimes? Snore.

There’s a popular refrain in Asian-American circles — ”We are not a monolith.” Right, we are not, but as a reader, I sure am getting doubtful.

What’s Missing

The aspect of Song’s story that I was fascinated by was her journey into art and painting. I would have loved to learn the details on how she decided to leave grad school to take art classes full-time. How did she break the news to her Korean parents that she left Harvard? I wanted to hear how she hustled and worked hard as a tutor to pay for art classes and New York rent. And she couldn’t get into some of the traditional art schools but found an artist’s workshop. I would have enjoyed hearing more about that episode too.

From interviews, (not her memoir), I learned that she was out of the house from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm most days as a young newlywed—first in art class and then to tutor. That is a lot of hard work to pursue your passion. I wanted to read about that—how she did whatever it took to go after art.

Sadly, her book glosses over those parts and focuses more on her crumbling marriage. Her book also omits the fact that it was her mother who introduced her to art. Her mother had training in drawing back in Korea. I learned these important facts from interviews she did as an artist before her book was published. My impression from reading the book was that art was the only place she was happy, so she just did it. It was that simple.

In Troubled, Rob Henderson notes something interesting: “Successful people tell the world they got lucky and tell their kids about the importance of hard work and sacrifice.”

In several of Song’s interviews, she repeatedly tells the audience, “I’m always the luckiest girl in the room. There was always someone there to lift me up.”