The fact that the children of so many Asian immigrants play classical music at a disproportionately high level—that they excel in a genre at the dusty peak of Western high art, one in which contemporary American culture is increasingly less interested—has made it an “Asian thing,” an Asian stereotype, a manifestation of that stubborn will to work that marks a certain kind of perceived inferiority. The performance of identity, especially that of a “model minority,” rarely, if ever, lends itself to notions of equality: In trying to play the part society has prescribed for you, you are inherently
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