J. Kang

An Honest Accounting of Asian-American Identity

Reviewed: 10-16-21

If you would like to get a glimpse of the honest reflections and private thoughts that any Asian-American with two brain cells surely has had on occasion -- then get this book. If you are an Asian-American that finds yourself feeling the hollowness of all the fruits that society has promised or struggle to situate yourself in a complex pyramid of injustice -- then buy this book.

Jay Caspian Kang seems to be divisive; one can plot out the kind of professionalized, NGO-style activists, cliques of writers, and media personalities that will certainly rail against this book. Why? Because it doesn't follow the now familiar stenography of upwardly mobile Asians and their radicalism of primarily form. As such, Kang's writing suffers the digressions and conflicts of everyday life rather than the perfectly planned woke speeches we have all come to glaze over during marches, media interviews, and the like.

This isn't to say that in the space between memoir doesn't hold well-researched, thoughtful, and sympathetic portraits of Asian-American history as we know it -- ranging from the origin of the term, the International Hotel, the building of FLushing, K-town, and the like. Despite exploring a wide array of subjects and pushing the edges of conventional wisdom, Kang is nothing if not sympathetic.

JCK asks upwardly mobile Asians to essentially commit themselves to becoming class traitors within the context of the US--a nation which has never ceased in its brutally one-sided class war and which has never truly reckoned with the ceaseless racism towards Blacks. He asks for us to betray the masters of capital not for a sense of abstract morality but rather to embrace a broader immigrant community--much of which lives on the fringes of society and often in poverty.

This is where one of the more reasonable critiques of the book comes. When being asked to side with the poor most people come to expect the subjects of the book to be representative. JCK has stated this more-or-less fell out of the scope of this book, and it seems a reasonable. That being said, a lot of the individual portraits are of upwardly mobile Asians -- which includes JCK himself (a fact he will cop to easily and often).

While this book does not push the boundaries of academic scholarship, radical thought, or reveal a secret asian history to unlock a rapturous radical front -- it does make an intervention (perhaps even a plea) to the kinds of upwardly mobile Asians that have the income, time, and wherewithal to naval gaze on identity to perhaps consider a better use of their time (when they are ready). These kind of people are real and so is there confusion. If they are left to imbibe the Gospels of Jeff Yang or the tired histories of Asian Studies professors -- then truly Asian-American identity as project will surely collapse into a fate ostensibly worse than the Irish becoming white.

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