Asian Americans Can Say “I love you”…They Just Say It a Bit Differently
The bite-sized morsel bursts in my mouth, releasing a stream of refreshing, tangy juice… Personally, nothing can induce a sensation of instant euphoria quite like a tangerine. For as long as I can remember, those humble fruits–meticulously peeled and brought to my room by my Asian American parents as I studied hard to live up to their expectations–have been a constant reminder of the unconditional love that my parents have for me. Although I hold their expectations in high regard, and their intimate gestures of love very close to my heart, they certainly aren’t unique to my own experience. For many Asian American children, this dichotomy between their parents’ labors of love and their simultaneous demands for us to be perfect children is a well-accepted and essential element of being a part of the Asian American community.
However, many outsiders only see the cutthroat expectations that Asian Americans tend to have for their children, viewing them as a cold and emotionless race, without also recognizing the intrinsic love found in every bowl of fresh-cut fruit prepared by an Asian mother or father who has already gone through their fair share of adversity. This stereotype, among many others, is perpetuated through mass media where white Americans hold the most power. In his essay, “Why We Struggle to Say ‘I Love You,’” Viet Thanh Nguyen extensively addresses these issues of disproportionate Asian American misrepresentation. Nguyen casts light on the idea that the difference between white Americans’ and Asian Americans’ ability to verbally communicate “I love you” can be attributed to the power that white Americans have in getting good representation: the representation that a community does (or doesn’t) get shapes their identity, and their feelings about whether or not that identity deserves love. However, he fails to emphasize that mass media misrepresents Asian Americans’ emotional capacities because of its ignorance of the struggles fueling the community’s unconventional forms of love, which also contributes to their difficulties with saying “I love you.”
Many Asian Americans fell victim to the inhumanities of misrepresentation before they even had the chance to step foot onto U.S. soil, and the picture that was painted of them being outsiders led to the deterioration of their self-esteem, and consequently, their ability to feel and express love for their community. This can be illustrated by one particular group of Asian Americans, Vietnam War refugees. The propaganda touted by American news outlets painted Vietnamese people either as villainous communists hellbent on murdering poor American soldiers, or desperately impoverished villagers in need of white saviors. Neither of these two evils is “lesser,” but they led to Vietnamese refugees being seen as an invasive, less-than-human species when they arrived in the U.S. In fact, Nguyen even shares that one of his “white elementary school classmates” asked him if he “had carried an AK-47 and fought in the war” because the only knowledge that his classmates had about Vietnamese people came from the misrepresented stories projected daily in the news. This horrible misrepresentation of Asian Americans by mass media and the racist slurs and mistreatment that arise from that produce crippling self-esteem and identity issues for Asian Americans. As a consequence of his classmate’s, the media’s, and other Americans’ perspective that Asians were outsiders, Nguyen began to nickname himself the “Asian invasion” because he had begun to view himself in the same way. This self-deprecating language, which is commonly used as a coping mechanism against insults that actually hit deep, shows how impactful and harmful the misrepresentation of Asian Americans really is. Asian Americans are unable to feel love for themselves, and this feeling of shame and hatred extends to their inability to express love towards their culture, roots, and family as well.
On the other hand, white Americans have a massive expanse of representation that gives them the privilege of being well-represented individuals, which makes it infinitely easier for them to be comfortable in their own skins and love their community for how it’s externally presented. White Americans may be portrayed as evil or pitiful in the media just like Asian Americans are, but this doesn’t take away from how they’re perceived as unique human beings because they have tons of other representations where they are heroes or triumphant protagonists. That diverse representation gives White Americans many opportunities to look up to role models that reflect the love that they want for themselves.
Under that larger umbrella of how differences in representation affect each community’s ability to express love is the misrepresentation of how that love is expressed because of differences in financial stability. Because Asian American immigrants were new to the U.S., they had to put in much more effort to support themselves and their families. Asian parents sacrificed their personal well-being and time to work long hours in a cruel and unfamiliar environment in order to put food on the table and ensure a better life for their children. These sacrifices, and the fear that their children will be forced to make the same ones, compels Asian parents to show their love through nagging about studying hard, getting into good schools, and pursuing “proper” careers, teaching methods which outsiders only view as severe and harsh. One prime example of this love being put to use is with education: since Asian immigrants often encounter obstacles because of their different educational backgrounds, they constantly emphasize the importance of maintaining good grades and getting stable jobs to their children in the hopes that they’ll be able to thrive in the future. This phenomenon is also prevalent in regards to food: many Asian immigrants didn’t have food abundantly available to them, so they always fuss over how much their kids eat, sometimes to the point of seeming to be force feeding them. These unconventional forms of love are fueled by Asian parents’ beliefs that actions speak louder than words, and that their actions to help their children, and thus their community to achieve more comfortable and secure lives, are the greatest forms of love there are.
These hidden motivations and complex love are hardly ever recognized by people who have always had their fundamental needs met, and so can say “I love you” comfortably without having to couple it with a million other reminders that can drown out the core message of love. According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, people can only prioritize social needs–such as love–once they have fulfilled the requirements for basic survival, including food and job security. Asian immigrants had to go through the process of attaining those basic needs in order to work towards better showing their love, whereas more powerful Americans, like U.S. born white Americans, could jump straight to the “love and belonging” level of the hierarchy because of their established material success stemming from their status as well-esteemed and well-represented Americans. This privilege is what allows powerful Americans (primarily white citizens and the mass media) to so easily label Asians simply as “tiger parents” and “subhuman robots” who are willing to do anything to achieve success, even if it means giving up their full range of human emotions in exchange for stern discipline. If these people were more aware of the underlying reasons for Asian Americans’ unconventional ways of showing love, which would be accomplished with better representation, then they’d also be able to understand that this love is as beautiful as it is complicated.
Although we understand that Asian Americans are much more than this single story about cruel tiger parents perpetuated by the mass media, we must also recognize that the single story isn’t a false story, but an incomplete one, and that there are unfortunate truths behind this stereotype. Many parents truly do have good intentions behind their somewhat sternly-executed methods of showing love, but there are cases where the fine line between tough love and abuse is overstepped. In fact, one of my relatives recently told me the story of his college friend who had committed suicide because of the overwhelming pressure that his parents placed on him to get straight A’s. His mom had constantly chastised him for “not being good enough,” and compared him to other Asian American children who were “better” than him, which ultimately led to his untimely death. Besides those extreme incidents, there are also many issues that come with the somewhat convoluted form of love that Asian parents show. It’s often very difficult for Asian American children to fully recognize the love behind their parents’ ambiguous actions and stern words, resulting in substantial misunderstandings and even mental health issues. Those mental health issues are further exacerbated by the lack of representation in mental health stories within the Asian American community, largely due to Asian parents’ reluctance to discuss mental health, and their aforementioned wishes for their children to pursue “stable careers,” a term which excludes professions like counselors and authors. Because Asian Americans with power (parents and the elderly) are also suppressing the community’s ability to share their stories, the consequences of the misrepresentation problem originating from mass media are heightened.
If we don’t change our trajectory and take control of the number of stories told about our community, then the perverse repercussions of the single story told by others on our ability to express “I love you” will continue to transcend time and generations. It is because of this essential truth that Asian American parents must learn to accept the value of storytelling in the same way that we came to understand and accept their complicated expressions of love. Now that the community has largely been able to achieve the basic needs of material wealth and comfort partly because of parents’ tough love, we can now place less emphasis on showing love through those means and instead focus on those of love and self-actualization. Sandra Oh encapsulated this essential step for moving forward in her Golden Globe acceptance speech, in which she said “I love you” to her parents in her native Korean language. First and foremost, her recognition in and of itself is a testament to the progress that the Asian American community is already making towards better representation–Oh was able to win a prestigious award in the film industry, a field usually dominated by white Americans. Her subsequent choice to confidently say “I love you” to her parents in Korean is also a powerful symbol of the love that she is able to express for her Asian American culture, and her ability to act as a voice for the community which has thus far been so underrepresented. On a much smaller scale, Nguyen has also proudly shared that he constantly says “I love you” to his son, even though he had difficulties doing so with his own father. He is able to do so, and break generational cycles of not articulating love, because he has found love and comfort in being able to share Asian American stories and spread Asian American representation. Despite the many internal and external factors discouraging him from becoming a storyteller, Nguyen still became an author because he recognized that sharing those stories would help to improve the Asian American community’s experiences as a whole. These two Asian American storytellers clearly demonstrate that once we obtain good representation for our community, we can amplify the voices and stories of all those we love, and say “I love you” in our own way.
