To show her that we shared a heritage, and possibly get a fellow countryman’s discount, I tilted my head forward, in shy imitation of a traditional bow.
A problem arises in this essay almost immediately with this quote from the first paragraph. Hwang is describing being in a dry-cleaning store with a counter clerk who is an immigrant from Korea. This confession is problematic in how it relates to the perceived intent of the essay. What follows will be an essay purporting to illustrate a serious identity crisis within the first-born generation of immigrants who came to America from elsewhere. The tone and mood is serious and grows even more so as the essay moves forward yet is constructed of odd moments of confession that bring this perception to doubt. One could conclude that the essay is an exercise in deceptive irony: a joke that doesn’t appear to be a joke. And this persistent disconnect begins here, at this moment, with the author’s confession that she confuses cultural heritage with superficial behavior and that, even more troubling, she is only trying to make a cultural connection for exploitative purposes.
To ensure that I reaped all the advantages of this country, my parents saw to it that I became full assimilated. So, like any American of my generation, I whiled away my youth strolling malls and talking on the phone, rhapsodizing over Andrew McCarthy’s blue eyes or analyzing the meaning of a certain upperclassman’s offer of a ride to the Homecoming football game.
So, there you have it. What is American culture to which the first-born generation of immigrants are expected to assimilate? Hanging out with friends, fantasizing about flavor-of-the-month movie actors and determining whether a high school senior is a nice guy or a rapist. Again, this points to the disconnect between the author’s stated serious concern about the consequences of her cultural identity crisis and the seemingly ironic confusion over what actually constitutes “culture.”
(Since I can’t bring myself even to entertain the thought of marrying the non-Korean men I’m attracted to, I’ve been dating only those I know I can stay clearheaded about.)
This little aside occurs within a paragraph in which Hwang explains how her romantic life has been built around parental expectations that she will marry a Korean man. The reference goes so far as to suggest that she could quite seriously contemplate marrying a man she doesn’t love if he happens to be Korean as a way of placating parental expectations. Now this is an expression of a cultural tradition. Just not a cultural tradition that has any place at all in the life of a person who describes themselves as a “fully assimilated” American. She seems serious and it is almost impossible to read this section as anything other than the sincere autobiographical testament it appears to be.
But it simply does not line up with her projection of what it means to be assimilated into what she describes as American culture. And if she really has lived out her entire post-puberty love life according to the dictates of “never been in love with someone I dated, or dated someone I loved” then where is this profound crisis of cultural identity that serves to shape the entire premise of the essay? The facts overwhelmingly suggest that her life is steeped far deeper into the ancient cultural traditions of Korean than lived according to any genuinely serious conception of whatever the term “American culture” might imply.
