A Gesture Life : Reviewing the Model Minority Complex in a Global Context

A Gesture Life : Reviewing the Model Minority Complex in a Global Context

  The stereotypical image of Asian Americans has undergone several stages of evolution. From derogatory epithets at the end of the nineteenth century to cajoling appellations in the early twentieth century, caricatures of the Asians are modified through time not because of interior changes among the Asians but because of exterior mutations of the American economy and politics. Overall, the model minority stereotype of the Asians remains a myth after undergoing all the evolution. This image tends not only to conglomerate diverse Asian groups by ignoring their different experiences and achievements, but also to segregate or dis-integrate Asians from non-Asians by emphasizing their opposition and disparity. The reviewing of the model minority image should thus be done with a historical attention to the pre-war and post-war eras, and with a geographical concern for the national and international situations. This essay examines the model minority with a focus on the production of this image, and how thereafter this image configures a complex among the Asians-"the model minority complex"-defined in this essay as a mental state aroused out of repressed anxiety over racial discrimination and cultural alienation, and featuring voluntary self-degradation and unnatural assimilation. This essay takes Chang-rae Lee"s A Gesture Life as a literary representation for studying the formation of the model minority complex by Asians in a global context.