My Life: Growing Up Asian in America

In this heartfelt anthology, Asian American writers, executives, and artists reflect on their encounters with the “model minority myth,” their experiences “being seen as less than American,” the “wisdom and shortcomings of [their] elders,” and other aspects of growing up in the U.S. In the introduction, MTV news correspondent SuChin Pak discusses the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes during the Covid-19 pandemic and recalls being told by cameramen to “open my eyes” and “squint less.” In “Fourteen Ways of Being Asian in America over Thirty-Six Years,” novelist Melissa de la Cruz, who is “Filipino-Chinese-Spanish,” documents experiences with racism, including the “ugly and disgusting” online comments she received after writing a DC Comics graphic novel in which Bruce Wayne is Asian. Elsewhere, Japanese American poet G Yamazawa reminds himself that “when you were a boy/ being deemed as powerful of a man as Bruce Lee/ still made you feel weak/ and helpless,” and former Reddit CEO Ellen K. Pao discusses how the belief in meritocracy passed down by her Taiwanese immigrant parents was shattered by her early experiences in Silicon Valley. Enriched by the diversity of its contributors and the intimacy of their pieces, this is a vital record of the Asian American experience. (May)