Jay Caspian Kang

An in depth personalized memoir/observations of race and class in America as witnessed by this Korean American popular journalist and several generations of his Korean family. He includes a potted history of anti-Asian legislation primarily in western US but rampant elsewhere as well and a reminder that Nationalism cuts both ways. Also prominent is a reminder that colored is also yellow (Asian), brown (Latinx), and red (North American Indigenous). Well done!
I requested and received a free ebook copy from Crown Publishing via NetGalley. Thank you!… (mere)

The Loneliest Americans by Jay Caspian Kang is a book about the Asian American experience in the United States. He writes at the onset that an Asian's assimilation involves "melting into the white middle class" or creating a racial identity that either makes it easy for white people to relate to us, or makes us "people of color". "The loneliness comes from the realization that nobody, whether white or Black, really cares if we succeed in creating any of these identities."

The book does not follow the form of a traditional memoir, but throughout he skillfully weaves in his background and family history ("...my mother flew back to Korea to give birth to me because she assumed her stay in America would be temporary") against the backdrop of America's own history with immigration. He discusses the emergence of the 1965 Hart-Celler Act and how it greatly increased the presence of Asians in this country. He later uses the Hart-Celler Act as a dividing line between early Chinese and Japanese immigrants and today's broader influx.

Four of the chapters offer explorations and observations of the Asian American experience in the context of assignments that Jay worked on. There is a good range of subjects: a protest rally in Minnesota, a look at test prep centers in Queens, a review of Koreatown (Los Angeles), a profile of a World Series of Poker contestant. He inserts himself in a style that quite appeals to me. His asides to the reader make you feel like a close collaborator of sorts.

He argues that the Asian American identity is a tenuous construct, especially for immigrants arriving after the Hart-Celler Act ("How do you create a people out of such silly connections?" "...our understanding of our 'homelands' comes from old things that lost their relevance decades ago..."). He vents about "a multicultural elite" that wants to "erase all the unseemly parts of Asian America." He rues how there's "no answer for the exclusion" an Asian American feels when they cannot talk about racism.

He ponders what he sees and experiences in the context of his young daughter. He wonders how she might see and experience these same things and whether she'll relate to any of these in the same way as him. Since she is mixed-race ("a more compelling identity") he suspects that she won't. He worries that eventually he'll resent her ease with the world, her future "thoughtless life", not living "under such contradictory pretenses."

I really liked this book and highly recommend it. It provides great context for the way Asian Americans are presented in today's discourse. It gives context for action ("show up") though perhaps it may not be enough.

I especially recommend it for any first generation Hart-Celler immigrants. His explanations for why it is frustrating to discuss race as an assimilated Asian American are heartfelt and hit home for me (full disclosure: I'm an assimilated first generation Hart-Celler immigrant). He conveys just how personal the search for identity is and why for Asian American immigrants it's an especially lonely undertaking.… (mere)