The Emptiness In Us: Identity and Disillusionment in Middle-Class Asian America

Narrative musings and quiet reflections on how broken dreams define who we are

“So, transform yourself first… Because you are young and have dreams and want to do something meaningful, that in itself, makes you our future and our hope. Keep expanding your horizon, decolonize your mind, and cross borders.” — Yuri Kochiyama

One autumn night, when the blistering Santa Ana winds swept down from the Great Basin and drenched us in a thick sweat, some friends and I were hanging out on the roof of an empty parking structure. It was after midnight but well above 80 degrees. There were three of us: a programmer, an ABG, and me, whoever the fuck I was. Below us, the vast nothingness of the San Joaquin Marsh loomed like a mouth waiting to swallow us whole — and beyond that, an array of skyscrapers twinkled in the cloudless Southern California sky. Ernst & Young, Capital Group, Broadcom: these shining monoliths of capitalism represented the end of our horizon, but to get there, we’d have to cross the swamp.

We sat on the concrete and talked about our childhoods — of how much or how little we had grown since then. Someone mentioned SATs, then GPAs, and so the conversation continued until no cliché was left untouched. We felt old, though none of us was over 20. Growing up wasn’t overtly traumatic or violent; it was just empty. Despite the vast resources we had access to — the fruits of our family’s “sacrifices”—something didn’t sit right. Even now, after all these years of reflection, I can’t quite put a finger on it. It was a strange feeling, a grey area between guilt and melancholy, a sleepy middle class suburb in the dead of summer, dim sum with family, fast food with friends, honor and respect and obligation and responsibility. The Asian American dream.

For my whole life, I’ve felt like I’ve been chasing something that keeps drifting farther off into the distance. Just for a second, though, the chase seemed to stop that night on the parking structure. Maybe the fog of adolescence hadn’t yet lifted, or maybe the bond that we shared protected us from the pains of our waning youth. Maybe we were just plain stupid. Regardless, two of us struggled with self-harm and suicide, myself included. In fact, Asian Americans between the ages of 20–24 have the highest suicide rate of any age group. Sooner or later, we all find ourselves caught in that grey area. At least we were in it together.

Despite all of this internal conflict, it takes a certain economic power to pay for SAT prep classes and music lessons, and the fact that these have become tropes in Asian American culture says more than we think about our socioeconomic status and racial positioning. Many of us are not refugees or immigrants or prisoners. Instead, we are given a unique proximity to Whiteness, an economic means to “get ahead” in the bloodbath that is the American capitalist machine. It is in this liminal space — that middle ground between the White upper class and the Black underclass — that many Asian Americans find themselves today, once again stuck in a grey area.

Historically, some of us have used that conditional Whiteness to our advantage, settling into cushy office jobs and raising well-to-do families complete with white picket fences and golden retrievers. The rise of the Model Minority, the influx of Asian refugees from Communist nations, and the aftermath of the Red Scare dovetailed in the 1960s and 70s; more-so than at any other point in history, America appeared as a “city upon a hill”. Despite this, the reality is that new immigrants were given preferential treatment if they were educated and middle class, though that did not stop the American media empire from using the Model Minority myth as a success story to extract labor from other racial groups around the country.

In any case, this new breed of privileged Asian Americans dominated the landscape of Asian America, and the growth of majority-Asian suburbs was unprecedented in the ladder half of the 20th century. Towns like Cupertino, Irvine, and Milpitas were all indicative of a socioeconomic movement driven by a new middle class Asian American family culture. Due to the concentration of wealth, conservatism has run rampant in these areas, with anti-immigrant and anti-affirmative action policies pushing many Asian American communities dangerously close to the GOP.

I grew up in a sleepy Asian corner of San Francisco’s Outer Richmond District. Though I often view the tiny dim sum houses and the pastel homes of my youth through rose-colored glasses, I know that my families’ success is predicated on that same middle class Asian American conservatism.

The two friends that accompanied me that night lived in Santa Clara and San Gabriel, middle-income suburban communities with significant Asian populations. All three of us were second or third generation Asian Americans and pressured into college by our parents, who fed us bullshit stories about upholding the family name and creating a better future for our children — the same stories that brought them to the United States in the first place.

Eventually, we’d move back to Santa Clara or San Gabriel or San Francisco. We’d work in spotless, fluorescent-lit offices. We’d start families. We’d start this cycle all over again, bound by honor and soaked in blood money.

My friend, The Programmer, was already massively successful: a straight-A student, robotics whiz, and a future intern at one of the largest companies in the Silicon Valley. I envied him for his commitment and his determination. I saw in him so many things that I didn’t see in myself. He could focus on his schoolwork. He could justify his parents’ sacrifices. He could make his family proud.

This is the guy your mom compares you to at New Year’s Dinner.

One day, I asked him about his plans for the future.

“I figure I’ll just go into tech and see where it goes from there. It’s where the money’s at, anyway,” he said to me, not looking up from his laptop.

“No, I mean like — what gets you up on the morning? Who do you want to be?” I wondered, “What else is there besides money?”

He paused, lines of code reflecting off his wire-framed glasses. I could feel the tiniest hint of conflict in the air.

“I don’t know,” he told me.

“…In this muddled in-between, one struggles to understand what about oneself has to be changed, what accepted, what preserved.” — Yiyun Li

The San Joaquin Marsh is a 300-acre behemoth of coastal wetland habitats, home to 12 miles of hiking trails and more than 200 bird species. Pelicans and geese soar above as carp and bass swim below, frolicking in endless creeks, streams, and rivers. A gem in the concrete jungle of Orange County, this freshwater oasis provides a quiet spot of reflection for the residents of a fast-paced urban community. The Marsh is also a significant portion of the Irvine Ranch Regional District’s Natural Treatment System, a series of manmade pools that filter nitrates and other pollutants out of urban runoff from the San Diego Creek.

Essentially, it’s a pool of sewage that’s 2/3 the size of Central Park.

As the three of us sat atop the parking structure over a mile away, there was a faint smell of rotting shit in the breeze. It started to rain, and the sound of water droplets on metal drowned out the streets below us. The 405 was a throbbing red vein in the distance, painted on a canvas of thick smog and sparkling city lights.

Not a single word was spoken, but in the aching beauty of that moment, our hearts wept quietly together—whether out of love or longing, I could not tell. The air was still, the night infinite.

“This is berry flavor,” the ABG said to me, passing me her Juul. I took a hit and looked out over the swamp.

“It tastes like Capri Sun,” I replied, and we all shared a laugh. In that moment, I felt whole, “Was I the only one White enough to drink that shit?”

For once, our lives didn’t seem so cluttered. It felt like we were the only three people in the world. We smoked through our silence, listening to the traffic roar and the eucalyptus leaves rustle as the clock struck midnight. Syrupy, sweet nicotine eased our minds as plumes of white vapor rose into the still night air. Though the city slept beneath us, those eerie skyscrapers still loomed above on the edge of that long, dark horizon. They were at the same time ominous symbols of the future and gentle reminders of that ill-defined childhood we never knew, oblong gravestones soaked in the blood and sweat and broken dreams of Southern California’s celestial suburban expanse.

Five stories above the uniform rows of townhomes, it almost felt like we were looking into the future.

Indeed, all of that was where we were headed, and despite how daunting it was, there was also something electrifying about it. This was it, after all — this was the long haul, the future we were predestined to inherit: middle-management, economy-plus, entry-level luxury.

Already, the mindless consumption had begun: $300 Supreme tshirts, BMWs, and Teslas. We were in the earliest stages of adulthood, wasting all of our money on the one thing we couldn’t buy: An Identity™.

Life already felt like a mid-life crisis.

“How the fuck did we get here?” I remember thinking to myself, taking another hit of the Capri Sun vape.

Sometimes, I wonder if the term Asian American has any meaning at all. Yes, we‘ve tried to find meaning in dance teams and import cars and raves, but even those eventually ring hollow. We cling to these fragments of identity because they are the closest thing we have to a home — and though they define us, they are also reminders of how far we are from where we need to be.

And what happens when we get old? Where do we go when our knees are too weak to dance, when our hearts are too weak for the drugs we use to forget?

Some day 20 or 30 years from now, we’ll look out onto the cul-de-sac from the second story of our suburban homes and realize that our entire lives are built on regret. We’ll have finally learned that we can run, but we can’t hide. Then — and only then—will our Asian American dream be complete.

Already, so many young Asian Americans are turning to escapism. Massive electronic music festivals, exorbitant drug use, club culture—even if for just a brief moment, these are all ways of lifting the burdens both passed down to us for generations and exerted onto us by life in the West. Sure, you can chalk it up to self-expression, but every cultural movement is deeply engrained in sociopolitical discourse, even if it stems from economic status within the white power structure.

And besides, how many of us can truly claim cultural citizenship outside of boba runs and red envelopes on Lunar New Year? So many elements of our youth movement—right down to the Supreme sweatshirts and the hip hop dance teams—are watered-down practices co-opted from Blackness and born out of artificial social capital. The rest are fragments of the lives our ancestors left behind long ago.

Sometimes, I’m not even sure what we can really call our own.

It’s time we look critically at where we come from and root out the appropriation and ugliness that pervades both our history and our community. It may be difficult, even painful, but this is the only way we can build an equitable future for our diaspora. It is a cause that transcends class systems and generations, a struggle that inextricably links our past and present, and can, if we try hard enough, bring us back together.

One night, my friend—The ABG—and I were hanging out together around Christmas time. It was three in the morning, and we had both just come back from separate holiday parties. We were sitting under a Christmas tree, sharing our life stories and passions and hopes and dreams — the things you whisper to yourself when you think no one is listening.

Like the rest of us, she had hidden desires and secret obsessions, tiny quirks that made her, her. As time went on though and adult life chipped away at the things that defined her youth, she became the person she is today. Still her, but a carefully curated, PG-13 version of herself, with all the rawest and truest parts of her soul hidden and concealed.

It’s not a bad thing, per se. Maybe it’s just growing up. Being such a young, baseless diaspora, we’re particularly vulnerable to a herd mentality following the mainstream. Still though, I’ve always maintained that our Asian American story has at its root equal parts dreams and disillusionment.

“Why?” I asked her that night, “Why raving? Why Supreme? Why Ecstacy? Why Henny? Doesn’t it feel like we’re all running from something?”

Externally, she was a partier and a raver, someone who could hold her alcohol and dance until morning. She was an amalgamation of everything an Asian parent is afraid of, the complete denial of the Model Minority. Internally, she was a lot more complicated than that. I think we all are. She was also the person who would make sure you got home safely at the end of the night.

I admired her ability to break the mold of what was expected while still retaining the gentle qualities that make us all human. I wished I could be that strong and that whole. I envied her completeness.

When I asked her that question, though, I could see her gears turning, and for a second, her eyes were blank, reflecting only the ruby and emerald glow of the Christmas lights.

“I don’t know,” she told me.

“Everyone is a recording to everyone else, a memory, a past transcript embedded in air or water or sound or light. No matter how close they are, they are not here. What they said, when they said it, it is not now.” — Charles Yu

The blazing sun rose over the horizon, casting us in a golden light and painting the sky in deep purples and bright oranges, a parting gift for spending the night in its absence. That morning, we felt a togetherness that could only be found in childhood’s final breaths, before the forces of the world tore us apart from each other and ourselves. Smiles and laughs were abundant as we all headed home. The four of us collapsed into our beds to the roar of traffic and the smell of freshly-cut grass. Back at the skyscrapers, people went to work while we went to sleep. A new day had begun.

That was one of the last nights we spent together. Had I known that in a few years time we would each be going our separate ways, I would have acted differently towards my friends. I would have told them how much I loved them and how important that moment was. I would have thanked them for helping me become the person I am today. I would have wrapped my arms around them, not just to protect them from the world but to keep them close to me.

Some day you and your childhood friends hung out for the last time, too — and just like me, you had no idea until after it happened.

When most people think about their own Asian American experience, they imagine something: a keepsake or a loved one or a memory. White Rabbit candy. Black Eggs in congee. Your grandmother’s winter melon soup on a cold winter night.

Or maybe it’s something more contemporary: a rave or a kpop concert or a favorite milk tea shop — one of those hallmarks of cultural hybridity that are so prevalent in the diaspora today.

All I’m asking is this: think critically about the culture you claim.

Where does it come from? Why does it resonate with you? Why have certain aspects of us — kpop, milk tea, anime, etc.—transcended their status as ethnic practices and become racial ones instead?

When I think about my Asian American experience, I don’t have any of these experiences to draw on, only a deep disillusionment of my place in our mainstream culture and a deeper longing to build a more secure, more meaningful identity.

How I go about doing that is up to me — and to a lesser degree, to us.

When I think of my Asian American experience, I think of nothing.

I don’t know. Maybe that “nothingness” is the most Asian American feeling there is.

Author’s note: I’m aware that the opinions and viewpoints expressed in this piece represent only a small segment of the Asian American population. I’m also aware that identity politics in middle class Asian America is not the most pressing issue in our diaspora. Many Asian communities throughout the world — South-East Asians and South Asians, especially — have a much more violent relationship with White supremacy, colonialism, and capitalism than the largely economically advantaged East Asian Americans written about here. With that said, the views expressed in this piece are my own, and I draw from a wealth of experience as a young Chinese American growing up in the age of late capitalism and Donald Trump. Both in my personal life and in my writing, I‘ve done my best to acknowledge my own economic privilege and stand against oppressive forces affecting Asian American, Black, Latinx, and Indigenous populations in the West and in countries under the influence of colonialism in Asia and the Global South. Since the interplays between class, race, and Whiteness in the Asian diaspora are so endless and confusing, constant introspection and analysis of our mainstream culture is the only way we can truly cultivate a better future for our community — and should also be an integral part of our Asian American identity. With that said, I hope that what I’ve written enlightens you, uplifts you, and gives you a few things to consider as we continue to forge our place in Western political discourse.