<p>Ahh I am finally making through the last few pages of this interesting article. Here is what the author says towards the end and to me it is beautiful. But what stands out most for me is that this is speaks to much more than Asian-ness. It speaks to the introvert in me, to the seeker in me, to the woman in me, to the fat girl in me, to the jewess, to all the parts of me that I wanted to blame for the fact that I was not the perfect angel gift to the world that I hoped to be. I think this speaks to every person of color who wonders if it’s color that limits them. I think we all have factors which, in our habits of projection, cause us to clench - to hold back - to be reserved - to be self doubting - and which then become self actuated limiting factors. Human condition.</p>
<p>"I finished school alienated both from Asian culture (which, in my hometown, was barely visible) and the manners and mores of my white peers. But like Mao, I wanted to be an individual. I had refused both cultures as an act of self-*assertion. An education spent dutifully acquiring credentials through relentless drilling seemed to me an obscenity. So did adopting the manipulative cheeriness that seemed to secure the popularity of white Americans. </p>
<p>Instead, I set about contriving to live beyond both poles. I wanted what James Baldwin sought as a *writer—“a power which outlasts kingdoms.” Anything short of that seemed a humiliating compromise. I would become an aristocrat of the spirit, who prides himself on his incompetence in the middling tasks that are the world’s business. Who does not seek after material gain. Who is his own law.</p>
<p>This, of course, was madness. A child of Asian immigrants born into the suburbs of New Jersey and educated at Rutgers cannot be a law unto himself. The only way to approximate this is to refuse employment, because you will not be bossed around by people beneath you, and shave your expenses to the bone, because you cannot afford more, and move into a decaying Victorian mansion in Jersey City, so that your sense of eccentric distinction can be preserved in the midst of poverty, and cut yourself free of every form of bourgeois discipline, because these are precisely the habits that will keep you chained to the mediocre fate you consider worse than death.</p>
<p>Throughout my twenties, I proudly turned away from one institution of American life after another (for instance, a steady job), though they had already long since turned away from me. Academe seemed another kind of death—but then again, I had a transcript marred by as many F’s as A’s. I had come from a culture that was the middle path incarnate. And yet for some people, there can be no middle path, only transcendence or descent into the abyss.</p>
<p>I was descending into the abyss.</p>
<p>All this was well deserved. No one had any reason to think I was anything or anyone. And yet I felt entitled to demand this recognition. I knew this was wrong and impermissible; therefore I had to double down on it. The world brings low such people. It brought me low. I haven’t had health insurance in ten years. I didn’t earn more than $12,000 for eight consecutive years. I went three years in the prime of my adulthood without touching a woman. I did not produce a masterpiece."</p>
<p>Ahh youth!</p>
It works.</p>