Earlier this year, the publication of Amy Chua's "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother incited a collective airing out of many varieties of race-based hysteria. But absent from the millions of words written in response to the book was any serious consideration of whether Asian Americans were in fact taking over this country. If it is true that they are collectively dominating in elite high schools and universities, is it also true that Asian Americans are dominating in the real world? My strong suspicion was that this was not so, and that the reasons would not be hard to find. If we are a collective juggernaut that inspires such awe and fear, why does it seem that so many Asians are so readily perceived to be, as I myself have felt, the products of a timid culture, easily pushed around by more assertive people, and thus basically invisible?
今年早些時候，蔡美兒所著的《虎媽戰歌》的出版激起了各種帶有種族成見的歇斯底里說辭。但是，在眾多對該書的評論之中，沒有任何一條認真地考慮過“亞裔美國人是否曾經真的主導這個國家”的問題。假設亞裔學生集體在名牌高中和大學的成績和表現確實更好，那么亞裔美國人是否在現實世界中獲得了同樣的主導地位？我懷疑結果并非如此，而其原因也不難發現。我經常感到，如果我們真像描繪的那樣是一個令人敬畏懼怕的集體，那為什么還有那么多亞裔經常被認為是一種過于謹小慎微文化的產物，很容易被那些更加自信的人所左右。從根本上來說，這不就是隱形人嗎？
A few months ago, I received an e-mail from a young man named Jefferson Mao, who after attending Stuyvesant High School had recently graduated from the University of Chicago. He wanted my advice about "being an Asian writer." This is how he described himself: "I got good grades and I love literature and I want to be a writer and an intellectual; at the same time, I'm the first person in my family to go to college, my parents don't speak English very well, and we don't own the apartment in Flushing that we live in. I mean, I'm proud of my parents and my neighborhood and what I perceive to be my artistic potential or whatever, but sometimes I feel like I'm jumping the gun a generation or two too early."
幾個月前，一個名叫杰弗遜·毛的年輕人給我發了一封電子郵件。他曾就讀于史岱文森高中，現已從芝加哥大學畢業。他向我征求建議，想要成為一名亞裔作家。他是這么描述自己的：“我成績優異，熱愛文學并且想成為一名作家和知識分子；另外，我是家里的第一個大學生，父母英語說得不好，我們至今都沒能買下我們在法拉盛租住的公寓。我的意思是，我為自己的父母和社區感到自豪，我認為自己有藝術等方面的潛能，但有時候，我感覺自己作為第一代移民家庭的兒子就有這種想法，是不是太過心急了？也許再等一兩代才比較合適。”
One bright, cold Sunday afternoon, I ride the 7 train to its last stop in Flushing, where the storefront signs are all written in Chinese and the sidewalks are a slow-moving river of impassive faces. Mao is waiting for me at the entrance of the Main Street subway station, and together we walk to a nearby Vietnamese restaurant.
一個晴朗而寒冷的星期日下午，我乘坐地鐵7號線到法拉盛的最后一站。那里所有的店面都掛著中文招牌，人行道上緩慢走動的人流帶著一張張毫無表情的面孔。毛在緬街地鐵站的入口處等著我，我們一起去了附近的一家越南菜館。
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