We’re at my friend Inyoung’s house. I’ve dropped in unannounced, two daughters in tow, and she’s laying out a beautiful meal: gamja-guk potato soup, gyeran-mari egg rolls, and hobak-jeon zucchini fritters. Watching my daughter wolf down more zucchini than she’s ever eaten in her life, I begin to spiral. I can’t conjure up soup from the sorry depths of my fridge. I can’t make Asian food. I can’t even speak Mandarin. I’m a bad Asian mom
.But then I jerk myself back from the precipice. I’m Asian enough, I tell myself. I’m mom enough. I’m enough
This defiance in the face of my own negativity is something I’ve been practicing for a few months now. I’ve been rewiring my neural pathways. I’ve been reconfiguring my thinking. And it’s all thanks to a new spate of books and movies about the Asian American mom.
Witness her comeback in film. At this year’s Oscars, Everything Everywhere All at Once is in the lead with eleven nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress. The supremely talented Michelle Yeoh plays Evelyn Wang, the exhausted owner of a Laundromat who discovers not only that she exists in a multiverse, but that she is the superhero tasked with saving it from its greatest threat: an alternate version of her daughter. Critics have swooned over the movie’s hot dog fingers, the butt plug fight scenes, the trippy zigzags through possible worlds, but stripped of its zaniness, the indie sleeper dominating the Oscars is essentially the story of an aging Asian American mom confronting her very real flaws to reach her daughter.
But then I jerk myself back from the precipice. I’m Asian enough, I tell myself. I’m mom enough. I’m enough
This defiance in the face of my own negativity is something I’ve been practicing for a few months now. I’ve been rewiring my neural pathways. I’ve been reconfiguring my thinking. And it’s all thanks to a new spate of books and movies about the Asian American mom.
Witness her comeback in film. At this year’s Oscars, Everything Everywhere All at Once is in the lead with eleven nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress. The supremely talented Michelle Yeoh plays Evelyn Wang, the exhausted owner of a Laundromat who discovers not only that she exists in a multiverse, but that she is the superhero tasked with saving it from its greatest threat: an alternate version of her daughter. Critics have swooned over the movie’s hot dog fingers, the butt plug fight scenes, the trippy zigzags through possible worlds, but stripped of its zaniness, the indie sleeper dominating the Oscars is essentially the story of an aging Asian American mom confronting her very real flaws to reach her daughter.
book.