Ordinary Disasters: How I Stopped Being a Model Minority

by Anne Anlin Cheng

A bold, moving, intimate look at race, gender, identity, illness, and immigration that examines, through lenses both personal and political, what it means to be an Asian American woman living in America today.

Part memoir, part cultural criticism, part history, Anne Anlin Cheng’s audacious original essays focus on art, politics, and popular culture. Through personal stories woven with a keen eye and an open heart, Cheng summons up the grief, love, anger, and humor in negotiating the realities of being a scholar, an immigrant Asian American woman, a cancer patient, a wife of a white man, and a mother of biracial children . . . all in the midst of the (extra)ordinary stresses of recent years.

Ordinary Disasters explores with lyricism and surgical precision the often difficult to articulate consequences of race, gender, immigration, and empire. It is the story of Chinese mothers and daughters, of race and nationality, of ambition and gender, and the intricate ways in which we struggle for interracial and intergenerational intimacies in a world where there can be no seamless identity.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Race, Biography Memoir, Essays, Audiobook

291 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 10, 2024

About the author

Anne Anlin Cheng is Professor of English and African American Literature at Princeton University. She specializes in twentieth-century literature and visual culture. She received her B.A. in English and Creative Writing at Princeton, her Masters in English and Creative Writing from Stanford University, and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from University of California at Berkeley. She teaches a wide range of courses in the areas of comparative race studies, aesthetic theory, psychoanalytic theory, literary criticism, law, film and gender studies, poetry and poetics.

Reviews

[Mai H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I went into this thinking I'd love it. While I'm not sure I hate it, I can also say I certainly don't love it. There are some massive oof moments.

Annotated a ton. Tabs, if you care, are: (1) internalized racism, (2) stupid shit white people say, (3) sad, (4) who is allowed to do what, and (5) too close to home. I can't keep things normal. It's not in my blood.

The good? There were some insightful things about growing up a Taiwanese American immigrant, the problems with marrying inside your race, the problems with marrying outside it, raising mixed race children, etc.

The bad? See above. No, but seriously, as much as I am tired of the WMAF narrative that populates the big cities of the US, if you choose to marry a white man and have children with him, maybe cut him some slack as he tries to understand you. And I'm not just blaming Anne. Everyone who is involved should be more cautious in their thinking. This memoir is obviously skewed in her favor, as she wrote the book, and I'm very much aware of that fact.

This is more a collection of interconnected essays than a true memoir, and I think with some editing some of the parts should be moved around. It's a bit choppy in pieces. Some of it is very woe is me.

I don't care enough to re-find some of the quotes I annotated to drop them here. Just know I wanted more from this. And if you're still with me, three stars isn't bad. I did like parts of this. I just didn't connect with it in a way I wanted to, and that's okay.

📖 Thank you to Goodreads and Pantheon

[Steph | bookedinsaigon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you to Pantheon and NetGalley for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review

Anne Anlin Cheng may want to stop being a model minority, but that doesn’t mean her writing can be a mess. Unfortunately, I found ORDINARY DISASTERS to be the written equivalent of a mad flail into the universe: simultaneously overburdened and overwhelmed by a range of thoughts and emotions about several dozen disparate topics, it dumps everything out in a long scream but never quite successfully makes a point about anything.

Look–as an Asian American woman, I will always support other Asian American women’s journey of reckoning with their intersectional identity of race and sex. However, if you’re going to put that into a collection of essays and subtitle it with the intention of marketing it towards other AsAm women who may want to read it to see themselves reflected in it, you ought to make sure to do several things:

1. Each essay needs to be a thematically complete entity.

Within each essay Cheng ping-pongs between topics : she will write one paragraph about her racial guilt over being in a WMAF relationship, followed by a paragraph about her experience battling cancer, followed by a paragraph of her love of fashion. Each one of these topics is fine, but not all in one essay! I finished each essay with my brow furrowed. Passages in isolation seemed insightful, but put together lacked cohesiveness.

2. Connect your examples with your themes.

The theme of racial identity flits in and out of Cheng’s essays on a whim. It’s one thing to write about her own WMAF relationship; it’s another to give us three pages about how her husband is the most excellent specimen of man in the world, without tying that back to the topic of WMAF relationships. She writes similarly unconvincingly about Asian vs (white) American family dynamics and parenting styles. She’ll write so emotionally about her mother, but then at the beginning and the end of the essay claim that the point is to analyze Asian mothers. There’s a difference between writing an essay talking about your mother’s good and bad points, and writing an essay that examines the problematic characteristics of Asian parenting while using your mother as an example.

3. Match your book’s subtitle and synopsis with your themes, and vice versa.

I’m upset enough by the misleading marketing for this book to deduct yet another star. Worrying about your looks, whether or not you’re a good mom/daughter/wife, reckoning with your cancer journey… all of that is fine, but in ORDINARY DISASTERS Cheng wants to imply that she struggles with these issues specifically because she is an Asian immigrant. It’s not. The book markets itself to be about “what it means to be an Asian American woman living in America today”, but it’s really only about what it means to be Cheng. Which is fine… but I wish it wouldn’t be dressed up as if it’s a problem Cheng faces because of her Asian identity.

I’m comparing this to Bibliophobia: A Memoir, an upcoming memoir-ish essay collection also published by an Asian American female academic. In Bibliophobia, Chihaya’s racial identity makes up part, but not most, of her essays, which made the book’s marketing feel truer to its contents while being more honest about the role that race plays in her memoir. In ORDINARY DISASTERS, on the other hand, race is purported to be front and center, while really not being so.

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And that leads me to an even more problematic (if that’s possible) aspect of the book. ORDINARY DISASTERS is not so much Cheng processing her internalized racism as it is her revealing her own lack of progress in processing her internalized racism. There are so many instances where she will make some purportedly insightful comment about racial identity, and then, in the very next sentence, say something that perpetuates problematic beliefs about race and racism. For instance, she’ll observe how much more difficult it is for people of color to be taken seriously in academia, and in the very next passage write about the time she felt hurt by something her POC colleagues said about her. She uncomfortably toes the line between realizing that white supremacy is the root of all race-based issues in the US (yes, even between different non-white races), and blaming POC (including herself) for our lack of success or inner peace.

I can’t in good conscience recommend ORDINARY DISASTERS because, aside from the glimmers of insight about being a racial/cultural minority in various spaces in the US, the collection as a whole carries an air of incompleteness or mislabeling at best and problematic internalized beliefs at worst.

[Chelsea · Rating 3 out of 5]

for some reason i thought this book would be a memoir that would teach me, in an uplifting and empowering way, how to Not be a model minority !! instead it is more of a sobering reflection on the condition of being asian american/an asian american woman in today’s world. the book is a mix of personal and academic essays, varying in depth and insight. the writing style in her personal essays felt a little detached, which made it hard for me to connect with her at first. i did still enjoy a lot of this, but i came away feeling somber and kind of heavy, which is okay.

[archibald (audrey) zebedee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is so laden in grief and anxiety that I had to force myself to get through the last 2 sections. Anne Cheng’s struggles with aging and worries about losing her loved ones dig deeply into my own worst fears, and every paragraph in those last 2 chapters just instilled a yet heavier feeling of despair.

This is the first book I’ve read that deals so directly with aging. All the other memoirs I’ve read are written by someone younger, or of a much lighter tone. It makes me worried; is all this suffering over aging inevitable? I worry, have I been blindly consuming content only by Gen Z and millennials and blissfully ignoring all the pain that (may) come after (hopefully) year 40?

I found the more academic-leaning essays (especially the Marie Kondo/Joan Didion one) to be most enjoyable, which is unsurprising considering Cheng’s profession . The title seems misleading; I didn’t walk away from the novel with the idea that Cheng has stopped being a model minority; in fact, the sections discussing race relations in the US were the least memorable to me.

Without a doubt the heaviest novel I’ve read (even considering Crying in Hmart/The Namesake…maybe because it’s my first heavy memoir post heartbreak). Making me cry a lot. Making me think a lot. A lot of anxieties and fears resurfacing, alongside a lot of gratitude for what I have.

[cathleen]

Impossible to rate. Many thoughts though.

[Sabrina Blandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a marginalized voice and woman, I really loved the parts of the essay collections relating to female relationships from grandmother to daughter. I thought Cheng's strongest writing came from the personal anecdotes but her identity as a scholar peeked through when she brought up certain arguments pertaining to pop culture, society, and the other topics she touches upon. I don't recommend this memoir if you are seeking personal growth or coming of age as it is a mix of essay writing with personal anecdotes. She brings out thoughts of the subconscious and shines a light on them, letting the ordinary disasters have a voice rather than go by unattended as is what happens to many of us.

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Powerful and compelling unique perspective with stilted, almost amateurish writing due to what seems like an academic and basically doing too much kind of voice. Phrases like, “The area inside my chest cavity felt larger,” made me pause. Being a collection of essays rather than a normal book, didn’t help. I enjoyed the words and language however there wasn’t as much of a start and finish as I wanted.
Due to the unusual writing I felt increasingly distracted from what could have been straightforward stories. If the author’s prose was more flowing — less defining almost everything as if it’s for someone learning the language or a grad school exercise — I think I would’ve liked it more. Overwrought explaining everything tediously.
Considering the amount of time spent in salons and describing the chemical smell, I wonder why there wasn’t a part about a connection made to the cancer like other similar writers did.
The thoughtfulness and ideas are excellent.

[Dionnem · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love her contribution to the field and her personal testimony. I was slighted disappointed to see that it seemed that she’d reached a point sort of like Afropessimism? While I appreciate her testimony on how assimilation/racism and imperialism/ capitalism wears on the body, I feel like she would greatly benefit from a conversation on Afrofuturism. Or idk. I think it would have been nice to hear more about the lawyer client dynamic and how that impacts the stability of academic foundation. Also really enjoyed hearing about her relationship with her mother & her family. It’s definitely been a book I’ve continued to think about and carry with me especially after the election

[Elli Brines · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clearly a high level academic, there were times I had a hard time understanding her simply because her vocabulary is far more advanced than mine. That said, it's clear this book is a reflection of her deepest and most personal self, including all of the pain, beauty, and dissonance that lives within all of us. It was a privilege to learn about and from her lived experience both in the ways I share hers and those I don't.

[Crystal · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

[Amber · Rating 3 out of 5]

gifted by the publisher

combining memoir and cultural criticism, OD explores Asian American identity at the intersection of gender, class, and immigration. I love the sections about complex mother-daughter relationships, where Cheng contemplates aging as a daughter and mother alongside the women in her family. Her reflection on one's mortality and legacy, as she battles cancer, is another aspect I sincerely appreciate. On the other hand, I find the essays about race a bit surface-level and self-indulgent. At times, I feel Cheng is writing for an audience who's never met an Asian person, and thus relying on the model minority stereotypes to make us more palatable. The subtitle of OD is "How I Stopped Being a Model Minority," and quite frankly, I think the book did the opposite in showing why we need to be a model minority so we can afford million-dollar houses and become tenured professors. Overall, I love the memoir portion of OD, but some racial discussions lack depth

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

“When I told my therapist this story years ago, she said ‘You mean your mother denied you years of joy with a pet because she was afraid you might suffer a few months of loss?’”

This has been getting a lot of slack, which is fair. There were some ramblings that felt disconnected from the thesis. Perhaps memoirs aren’t really the author’s thing. But there were quite a few raw moments that spoke to me, particularly about her relationships with her husband and both of her parents, that I had to put the book down to cry a little.

[Ruby · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Used as pawns in the game of racial divisiveness, Asian Americans are often despised for their reputed adjacency to whiteness and economic privileges."

"His presence in most spaces is rarely questioned. I enter a room and immediately scan it for Asians or other people of color, their number (whether none or many) calling for different social arsenals. Over the years, I have developed enough of a mask of compuser to be highly functional. Few people know how much mental energy it takes for me to enter a room full of people or to talk to a stranger."

"It took years for me to acknowledge my deep sense of unbelonging in America. Such admission would feel like a great failure. It would mean I have fallen into the petty trap of the disgruntled other, like the child who, in demanding to know why she was not invited to a party, exposes her longing."

"What feels so terrible about social alientation is that it can divide you from yourself."

"For the time I have, I want to live honestly. I want to stop proving my worth to a world that treats the diligent but tiresome Asian American woman with convenience and contempt."

"Coming back to the East Coast reminded me how race in America, for the most part, remains black and white. One the East Coast and in the world of Ivy League, Asians rarely fall into the calculus, except when being invoked as a threat to Blacks and whites."

"Like an invisible disease, assimilation is at its best when it's undetectable. The sociologist Erving Goffman calls assimilation "covering": the idea that you downplay or cover over your differences to match mainstream culture or expectation. Assimilation is not passing. It's more of a shell game."

"For persons of color in America, the imperative to move on in the face of painful encounters comes from a place much deeper than a regard for social niceties. It arises as a claustrophobic survival intstinct. It is about carrying on despite the silent tear in the social fabric, the gasping void you must sidestep, or be confronted by the utter rejection of your being and person by the same people smiling around you."

"It's a no-win game: as a person of color, you must speak up for yourself, but the moment you speak as a person of color, you've already lost the game."

"Can a woman of color participate in acts of beauty without self-harm? What is beauty for the "unbeautiful"?"

"We can probably all safely debate the beauty of a thing-a flower or a painting-without too much heat, but when it comes to the beauty of a person, especially a woman of color, we are suddenly in a minefield of objectification, fetishization, and appropriation, at risk from others and from ourselves."

"I think of Asian cuteness as an extension of the model minority myth: how Asians get to become digestible in American popular culture by becoming harmless and consumable."

"The early Chinese in the American South, merchants and laborers alike, lived in the cracks of a segregated system designed for Blacks and whites; they were maligned by the whites, who found them subhuman, and resented by Blacks, who saw them as competition."

"Being target for being Asian in America is not exceptional. It is the result and expression of more than three hundred years of cultural and legal discrimination directed first specifically against "the Chinese" in the 1800s and then, post-World War II, expanded more broadly against people from the "Asia Triangle" or the "Asiatic Barred Zone."

"Systems of colonialism, internment, segregation-all of which America has availed itself of-operate not by fully expelling the racial Other but by securing without recognizing by the Other within existing institutions. This is what makes the American racial ecology and American democracy so specific and volatile: an elaborate structure built on the diversity that it disavows."

"Cancer and racism: diseases at the most cellular level, killing the biological body and the body politic. Both render the distinction between paranoia and perspicacity impossible. There are scripts that we follow, and scripts that follow us."

"There is something terribly wrong about the way we think about racial recognition in the country: a crude calculus based on damage."

"When you're the only Asain person in the room, whether it is a room full of white people or full of other persons of color, you are either the pet (good for demonstration) or the intruder."

[Jasmine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have many disjointed thoughts about this one!
- I finally finished Ordinary Disasters because I have to return it to the library today. It was probably my most thought-provoking read this year, but it was hard to read some of the truths about historical and present-day discrimination and violence against Asian Americans
- Professor Cheng's brain operates on a completely different level than mine. I would never be able to make some of the connections that she does between moments in history and the present (or between Thoreau and Marie Kondo), have such cool insights about fashion (ex. "...clothes so meticulously constructed that they seem capable of standing alone, sometimes even standing in for the human body") or see the deeper significance of the Everything Bagel or the Evelyn-rock following the Joy-rock off the cliff in Everything Everywhere All At Once
- It must have been difficult to be so vulnerable about many aspects of her personal life, including her first marriage, her relationship with her aging mother, her experience with chemotherapy and an amnesiac episode, her thoughts on death
- She observed that all of the students who committed suicide at Princeton in the past few years were Asian American, and I was surprised that I didn't realize that. I even spoke about the topic for a Chinese assignment last semester and still didn't make the connection. I wonder why this is the case and why the University isn't doing more to understand it. I would love to do an interview series with the students' friends/families or something but wouldn't want to be intrusive
- I especially liked Chapter 18, "Passing Vignettes"
- I was surprised by how much hostility and how many ordinary disasters/microaggressions (some of them were definitely more like macroaggressions) she experienced on campus and from her colleagues. I guess I've been lucky not to have experienced any, but it might just be because I haven't advocated for Asian American Studies, which she has for many years. I want her to know that people like me are extremely grateful for her work, even if others may have made her feel that she only earned her position "because of affirmative action"
- I find it so impressive that she went from not knowing the alphabet when her family immigrated to the US to becoming an English professor who analyzes and writes for a living (and uses words like auratic and thingliness and psychical). English is my mother tongue and I still feel like I don't know how to analyze literature or write clearly
- Overall a very unique book that I'm glad I had the chance to read!

[Matthew Molinaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

a few months ago, Princeton professor Anne Anlin Cheng published an essay on interracial marriage in the yale review. I remember thinking "thee Anne Cheng of ornamentalism, of brilliant work on Josephine Baker, writing from a personal perspective? I'm engaging!" I immediately read this timeless essay and sent it to my mom, as I plan to for the rest of the essays that make up ordinary disasters.

gosh Cheng's critiques are so sharp you can't feel her knife. her commentary on her experience with cancer and Sjögren's syndrome to contemporary cultural production (from Barbie to Everything Everywhere) to the 2021 Atlanta mass killings to her mother, grandmother, daughter and family just probes the intimacies of race and Asian American life with such trademark erudition.

I see a lot of negative reviews on Cheng's fragmentation or her use of the surface, but that to me is missing the point. not only babes is she literally a scholar of modernism and wrote THE book on the modern surface through Josephine Baker, to me a "whole" or "total" completionist essay would completely dismantle the project—following her bold staging of Joan Didion and Marie Kondo's ethos of self-possession, the style these reviewers expect of cheng would instead fashion a self-possession too neat, too facile, too derivative.

when I picked up this essay collection, I stayed because of the experimentation, excited to see where her gorgeous mind would take me next.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ordinary Disasters is a great book for AAPI Heritage Month. Dr. Cheng, professor at UC Berkeley and now Princeton, powerfully captures these moments of what it means to be an Asian-borne living in the US as well as Asian-American and where the smallest of daily moments make you feel like a minority.

**SPOILER ALERT BELOW IN THIS PARAGRAPH**
I found her stories toward the beginning of the book stronger, more poignant and funnier in the first half of the book. And, the storytelling was more focused. Toward the end of the book, I thought it was a broader reflection of her family dynamics with her son and husband. She describes her son becoming a teenager and the feeling that he pulled away while she battles cancer. As she describes this, she's gentler and has a less biting argument. This could be for many reasons: she's writing while she's battling cancer, and this is her son whom she wants to be kinder to.

Another point of criticality is that she often discusses the perspective of Asian-Americans, but she really only discusses this from an East Asian perspective. So, readers from other Asian backgrounds may wonder, "Well, what about us? What about our voices?"

Still, I enjoyed this read, and from the perspective of a professor of ethnic studies who migrated here. She has great stories of merging her Taiwanese upbringing and values with her American life. And, I think she captured an era that predated my conscientiousness.

[Olivia · Rating 3 out of 5]

We're lucky to have had a lot of compelling writing about Asian American experiences published in the last five years, and I do think that means there's a higher bar now to add something new to the conversation. I was disappointed in how many essays felt like either a rehash of ideas I'd already heard many times before (the hypersexualization of Asian women and the Page Act, affirmative action) or attempts to draw connections that I felt very skeptical of (tying the movie EEAAO to model minority pressures, suggesting that the googly eyes on the rocks are a "correction" of the slanted Asian eye stereotype).
I also personally found the writing style to be a bit bland, and found myself skimming the last half of the book to see if anything new or interesting jumped out. There was one standout essay in the collection in which Cheng juxtaposes Joan Didion's essay on self-respect with Marie Kondo's cleaning philosophy to discuss female efficiency and control. I wish the rest of the book had been as fresh and incisive.

[Lucien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cheng's chapters work far more as discrete essays than as interconnected chapters, and the porousness of their borders (along with the sections' borders), where themes will reappear and repeat, made this memoir/collection very welcoming to reading out of order and throughout several weeks.

I was a bit disappointed with the ageism in her "On Aging" essay/chapter, where she equates aging with suffering, full-stop, as well as with the somewhat more gender binary/essentialist discussions of her challenges raising a son (who loves science, doesn't hug often, etc) versus raising a daughter (who loves cooking and fashion, hugs and snuggles, etc).

The book, as reviewers have noted, is complicated, even messy, but so is life, and while I might have marketed/subtitled the book differently (I had hoped for much more discussion of race, especially being Asian American in the American South), I appreciate thinking and feeling alongside Cheng for these pages.

[Gillian Schneider]

some of these essays are so perfect and hit so hard and others don't really hit the mark for me

really loved the sections on the fetishization of asian women and the multi-medium approach that cheng uses to analyze this (fashion, art, film, personal experience, history etc)

some of people's criticism of the book lies in the kind of academic/intellectual language she uses, saying it makes the book inaccessible, but she's a professor at princeton and an academic first so i actually really enjoyed that aspect of the book because her critical eye is so well developed and i learned a lot ; i actually think the more memoir heavy sections were the ones that i didn't like so much (i think this is a theme in my reviews of memoir-cultural critique books)

[Kristin | ktlee.writes · Rating 2 out of 5]

I cannot recommend this book, unfortunately. The writing on race is full of problems and I found the book to reinforce stereotypes rather than dismantle them. Readers whom I trust tell me Cheng's scholarly work is excellent, so perhaps try Ornamentalism instead.

If you'd like to read a book about the Asian American experience, I'd recommend Julia Lee's Biting the Hand or Viet Thanh Nguyen's A Man of Two Faces.

[Shana · Rating 4 out of 5]

***Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review***

The first essay hooked me, and I found the rest to be a wild ride where some resonated and others not so much. That's how essay collections go. I appreciate a lot of Anne Anlin Cheng's insight and introspection; however, I'm not quite sure about the part where she stopped being a model minority. I would have liked to have had that more explicitly addressed.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book inconsistent. There were times it dragged, especially at the beginning when it seemed the author was using these pages to complain. However, there were also insightful chapters, especially at the halfway mark. The analysis of the Asian racial experience was the most elucidating for me and the point where the book redeemed itself. I nearly stopped reading - but stick with it if you want to delve into race and dying.

[Meredith Molloy · Rating 4 out of 5]

🎧: Ordinary Disasters by Anne Anlin Cheng
⭐️: 4/5

A listen that I related to at times as an Asian American, as a woman, as a mother, and as a wife in an interracial marriage. Powerful and timely, this is the strongest of the AAPI diaspora books I’ve picked up.

Cheng is a scholar at her core, and at times the prose slips into the academic. These parts, while informative, fall weaker, while her voice shines in the personal.

[Shanereads · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love reading memoirs.

This is a memoir made up of several essays. I loved reading about the authors girlhood in Taiwan, and her subsequent relations with her family after coming to United States. I especially loved reading about Anne's changing relationship with her son as he grew into a young man.

Anyone who enjoys a good memoir will enjoy this.

This review copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review. Huge thanks to Pantheon for my review copy!

[Mary C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Essays about the author's experiences in school, society and work as an Asian American female.Family
expectations, how society expects her to behave along with the constant microaggressions are neverending. Reflections on being a child, a wife, mother and teacher.
Interesting read.
#OrdinaryDisasters #Pantheon #NetGalley

[Linda Zhang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favorite Chapters: Fictions and Frictions of Interracial Love, Irascible Love, Beauty Queen, Asian Woman Is/Not Robot, Asian Pessimism, How I Keep Losing my Father

[Tina Nouri · Rating 5 out of 5]

4 work 💋

[Lei · Rating 4 out of 5]

she has really proved in an increasingly identity-oriented age the possibility of inhabiting a porous body while still holding onto the political imperative of having an identity. The chapter on affirmative action helped me come to this belated realization of how much of her academic work actually hovers above or around the periphery of asian american studies (the books barely attempt conversations with the existing scholarship in the field despite their very obvious "asian american concerns"), which might be related to her disillusion with the field's obsessive reification of the identity. (her use of parenthetical disruption throughout the book is very cute!!!!

[Daphne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anne Cheng is so smart and honest and I really liked what she did with this book. highlighted a lot in here that I would like to go back to one day. themes: Asian-American female experience, academia, relationships, motherhood, illness, mortality, beauty, ornamentalism, more that I’m forgetting