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Notes -
Sentenced to 1000 Pages of Contemporary Diaspora Literature Written by Asian-American Women
Here's a link that's not login-walled.
Asian-American women are not OK, at least if you go by what they write about.
All the books the author read feature a difficult mother-daughter relationship, with the author giving a hilarious quote of "Chinese mothers spent a thousand years binding their daughters’ feet, so maybe there is some deep need to torture their female offspring, which can nowadays only find an outlet in forcing them into piano lessons and telling them they are getting fat. "
They all mourn being unable to speak their mother tongue, but make no significant attempt to actually learn it.
The books are mostly portraits of neuroticism. "Neurotic about not being attractive because they are Asian. Neurotic about only being attractive because they are Asian. Neurotic about being too Asian. Neurotic about not being Asian enough. Neurotic about taking after their mothers. Neurotic about not living up to their mother’s expectations. Three of the books feature visits to therapists."
They're largely obsessed with white people, but in the worst ways possible. They think white society is a hair's breadth away from putting them all in concentration camps. They all have white boyfriends, which presumably fill the same niche that orcs do in hentai, with their physical characteristics (especially their height) always being brought up.
They think white people are just as obsessed with them. What might seem like a casual conversation to the white person feels like an intense struggle for racial supremacy that both people are obviously aware of to the Asian woman.
Comprehensive list of socially-acceptable jobs for Asian-American women:
I'd go insane too tbh.
As opposed to any usual office job?
I did leave one option off. Number 5: Something something biotech.
I would probably do a double-take if I heard someone say, “you need to talk to our accounts payable specialist, Xiu Ying Wang,” whereas seeing a name like that on a lab report is completely unremarkable.
For some really advanced racism, you can even drill down into the specific romanization choice, which statistically implies a certain country of origin, which in turn hones the distribution of likely occupations.
Continuing with your example:
Xiu Ying Wang => ethnic Chinese from Singapore/Malaysia => probably an accountant or similar back office role in Australia or New Zealand
Xiuying Wang => mainland Chinese => probably came to the US for a PhD in STEM
Hsiu-Ying Wang => Taiwanese => most likely working in semiconductors, or perhaps traipsing around NYC or LA as a shiftless BPD art ho (Hsiu-Ying Ho?)
You’ve even added a 4th category in accidentally, as Ho is not a romanization for a sound that exists in Mandarin. That name sounds Cantonese to me, and the Cantonese-origin diaspora and Hong Kong will still romanize their names that way.
“Ho” is the Wade-Giles romanization of a Mandarin sound (“He” in Pinyin). Though it can also be a transliteration of Cantonese, as you said.
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I’ve met countless East Asian women who work in back office or clerical / admin jobs, as paralegals, in other low tier white collar jobs.
The same is true in banks - including the high-end back office roles like quant risk modellers or regulatory specialists. In-house legal and the good Finance roles are whiter - probably because they mostly recruit women who mummy-tracked out of BigLaw and Big 4 accountancy firms respectively.
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Probably a geo/country thing. I know in Australia accounting being forever on the skilled visa listings means they're very present, but I'd imagine in other countries that's less of a factor.
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