Eat a Peach

by David Chang

The downside to the term tiger parenting entering the mainstream vocabulary is that it gives a cute name to what is actually a painful and demoralizing existence. It also feeds into the perception that all Asian kids are book smart because their parents make it so. Well, guess what. It’s not true. Not all our parents are tiger parents, tiger parenting doesn’t always work, and not all Asian kids are good at school. In fact, not all Asian kids are any one thing. To be young and Asian in America often means fighting a multifront war against sameness.

Model minority myth

As a kid, I was embarrassed by the smell of our kitchen and the look of our Korean food, so when Sherri Chang wasn’t around, I mostly sustained myself with mozzarella sticks, chicken fingers, Hungry-Man dinners, microwave burritos, quesadillas, and Ichiran ramen and Shin ramyun. Latchkey kid fare, which was all right by me.

This is me