The Perils of Success

In every way that counts, Took Took Thongthiraj is the personification of American promise. Engaging, intelligent and an achiever, the 22-year-old UCLA senior radiates confidence. "I'm 100% American and 100% Asian," she declares. "A lot of Asian Americans feel forced to choose between the two, which is a message they get from their parents. But I've worked hard to create a cultural hybrid for myself."

The youngest of six daughters born to a Thai couple who immigrated to Southern California nearly 30 years ago, Thongthiraj has posted a perfect grade-point average of 4.0 at UCLA. She hopes to go on to win a master's degree and a Ph.D., with the eventual aim of teaching women's and Asian- American studies at the university level. Her story sounds like every parent's dream come true, but it is hardly unique. Around the country, young people of Asian descent seem to embody the tongue-in-cheek demographics of Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon, where "all the children are above average." Working-world Asians, meanwhile, have produced a veritable galaxy of stellar performers in the U.S., from the arts and sciences to business and finance. Like immigrating Jews of earlier generations, they have parlayed cultural emphases on education and hard work into brilliant attainments.

What does make Thongthiraj unusual is her determination to win something more elusive than a career: to fashion a new identity out of the conflicting allegiances and double-edged stereotypes that plague the Asian-American psyche. Material success has bred resentment, envy, even backlashes of violence from such other subnationalities as blacks and Latinos; last year's Los Angeles riot was a vivid reminder of that vulnerability. The image of Asians as immigrant role models has also disguised the enduring poverty of some, as well as the political feebleness of the minority as a whole.

Grace Yun, director of the New York City-based Inter-Relations Collaborative, describes this role-model "myth" as a "source of enormous concern." She deplores the idea that Asian Americans don't have any problems: "Thirty-six percent of the Vietnamese-American community in 1990 was below the poverty line. You see computers being advertised by little Asian geniuses. This is very damaging. One of the devastating by-products is anti-Asian violence."

The story is not new. From the time Chinese Forty-Niners joined the California Gold Rush, Asians have tended to see America in terms of the old Cantonese name for San Francisco: Gao Gam Saan (Old Gold Mountain), or a land of economic opportunity above all. Nativist harassment of the newcomers, coupled with openly racist citizenship and immigration laws, encouraged the impulse to get ahead financially without bothering about assimilation into the mainstream society. Politics was something to be avoided. As an old Far Eastern maxim goes, the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.

At UCLA, Thongthiraj is helping change that view. She is director of the Asian Pacific Coalition, an umbrella group of 19 ethnic organizations on campus. In promoting cultural awareness and aiding new immigrants, especially hard-luck cases from Indochina, the coalition encourages them to articulate a more assertive political voice and American identity.