2003-07-10 - 11:09 p.m.

So I read in the paper the other day about the new breed of Asian-American fiction that was new and different from Amy Tan. Which is good because if my life became anything like the Joy Luck Club I might just have to OD on opium. But the books they listed as being the darker, grittier view of the modern Asian-American all seemed like…darker grittier Amy Tan. So now, you can thrill to the stories of young Asian girls who dye their hair outlandish colors and get piercings…before becoming concubines and OD-ing on opium muffins.

I actually a saw a move that was all about the newer, darker Asian-American experience called Better Luck Tomorrow which was pretty damn cool. It was all about middle class Asians who spend their days trying to get into the Ivy Leagues and eased the pressure with nights in an orgy of sex, drugs and crime. But the thing is, while cool it, raises two points.

One: boy I sure wish I knew that us Asians were allowed to be more than two dimensional over achievers and could live the kind of teen aged sketch life that all you non-overachieving good minorities could. It sure would have made Quiz Bowl practice a lot more fun.

Two: I really can’t relate to that either. Well maybe it is for the Cali crowd my cousin is fucking. And maybe it is for the Old Man (which would explain a lot). But my life was nothing like that. I wasn’t really gunning for the Ivy League (though I did get an interview with Harvard but I didn’t get in; I didn’t really want to go but I’m told I’ve shamed my family for 17 generations) and I wasn’t that much of an over achiever. And to my eternal regret, I was the Well Spoken Asian Boy/Sci-Fi Geek Nerd.

Which all means this: judging from popular culture all Asian Americans are

Confused young women struggling to find their own identity while wrestling with the legacy of a mother who gave up her babies and became a concubine to Russle Wong who eats Watermelons in a pornographic fashion and escaped from the Mao government and came to San Francisco and sacrificed for their daughter to get straight As and speak English and drink coca cola and why are you breaking her heart by not being good at chess, the piano and marrying a white guy and that’s why she committed suicide by eating the opium.

Or

Over achieving preppy young men who play the stereotypical Asian good boy by day but by night are driven by the need to break that very stereotype to go out and drink Everclear, snort coke, get into fights, commit petty theft and try to seduce emotionally vulnerable young girls while at the same time doing shots and playing “strip guess which element on the Periodic Table” with the Quiz Bowl team and in the end shooting yourself for only getting 1590 on the SATs and not getting into Harvard and so disgracing your family and ancestors for the next 17 generations.

Fucking stereotypes. If I’m going be judged by Asian stereotypes I’d rather be

Wandering swordsman with quasi-mystical powers trained in such deadly arts as that Psycho Bruce Lee Shit, the Sonny Mao hard ass style, that Wu-Tang Flow, Woo Gun Mojo, the Chow Long Coat Strut, and the Wong Fei Hong Sexual Healing who travels across the post apocalyptic cyber punk wasteland of the Neo Mega Tokyo Chiba Hong Kong Guang Hu Underworld getting into adventures with white haired witches, cyborgs, androids, vampires, mutants, renegade Bhuddist monks, the Triads, the Yakuza, and really, really big giant robots.

Who’s really well spoken.

That I can relate to.

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