Today’s link is from The New Yorker.
Why I think it’s worth sharing: I started identifying as an Asian American in college after taking Asian American Studies 101 with Gary Okihiro, one of the top scholars in the field and an excellent teacher. It was so affirming to sit in a classroom where I was finally in the majority and to discover that I wasn’t as alone as I had thought in so many of my lived experiences. At the same time, I came to realize how broadly we were asking the term “Asian American” to stretch. In college I was friends for awhile with a woman who had grown up on welfare in New York’s Chinatown, while I’d grown up in a middle-class academic family in white exurbs. Though we could both claim Chinese ancestors, our commonalities pretty much ended there.
I found this piece a valuable, thoughtful and informative dissection of the Asian American electorate in 2020. (And I’m really happy to see an Asian American byline on it.)
Here’s the article by Hua Hsu.