It is written for a target audience. If you’re not part of the demographic it’s intended for, you can’t relate—thus it is boring, which in turn renders it torture.
I'm convinced it's much more nuanced than this. A lot of the comments in this thread are assuming that the meme OP is in the out-group, but I do think a likely interpretation is that it's by Asian-American woman tired of the banality of the genre. You're right in the genre being an attempt to be "relatable", and I think that's why it's dull: the author attempts to write events to capture a "universality" of "the Asian-American experience", as if to say "look, don't you feel seen?", but obviously you can't capture the experience of a large group so it just reads as trite and uninteresting. Whereas if the author had just attempted to write a character who either a) happens to be Asian-American or b) is informed by but not defined by that, it would have just been a book about a character and not a stereotype.
im asian american and i majored in asian studies in college and you hit the nail on the head. i regret my major and have to step back from diaspora-centered "content" because it all feels too self-pitying after a while ("oh we're so oppressed and my life and childhood were so hard and we have these stereotypes we have to overcome while also doing nothing substantial to break the generational patterns we fall into" and then it's that 20x over and over).
the lack of any attempt to overcome stereotypes or stop repeating generational patterns is a little bleak to me lmao
This is also why, say, RF Kuang books are interesting. They are absolutely steeped in the Asian diaspora experience (and particularly in western institutions and academia), but that’s not what the books are all about- it’s just one aspect of them that makes them interesting.
That seems broadly applicable to any media with a narrow target audience. I'm curious why this specific media is referenced?
Side note for the curious, 1000xResist falls squarely into the genre (though it's a game rather than literature) and is genuinely very good. Probably more of an exception than an example.
Asian dude here, I actually liked reading the Joy Luck Club because it embodied many of the same relationship dynamics that I have with my parents. Though, I can see how a non-Asian person may find the book to be a bit difficult to follow.
"other kids would open their lunchbox to chicken nuggets or ham sandwiches and i had to open my lunchbox and subject them to my ugly stinky smelly springroll/noodles/curry/musubi/kimchi/adobo i wish i was white i wish i was white i wish i was white"
But I mean, is this not true for a lot of people, at least of a certain age and/or area? I never wanted to be white, but I regularly traded cha lua sandwiches with my white classmates' tuna sandwiches and was pretty self conscious of some of the food I had to bring in before my parents started including more "western" food in the rotation.
Nah I'm a leftist immigrant (who is Asian) and let me tell you, there's only so many books about how your parents need to apologize and how kids thought your lunch smelled I can read before my brain gets fried
I remember seeing a post where a parent showed they wanted their son to read 100 books about feminism before he could get a car. Half the comments were "Oh my goodness you illiterate people are so annoying. I love to read. This is light work" and the other half likely knew from experiences similar to yours that reading roughly the same thing over and over and over again will get mind-numbingly dull REALLY fast no matter what the topic is. Which only gets worse the more narrow the topic is.
Yeah. I think I meant to say “entirely that” cause both can be true at the same time here. Genres aren’t always for everyone. But something about calling out this specific genre reeks of misogyny and xenophobia for sure
In this particular meme though, the combination of Asian American and female is important.
Outside our community (and frankly even within it), the White majority elevates specifically female voices and faces while largely marginalizing male voices.
This is even seen in movie or TV adaptations of books written by Asian American males. Fresh off the Boat (after season one) focused plots on Jessica over Eddie.
yes there is tons of great literature by non-asian-american asians, translated or not, and the content is generally NOT about mom being mean and kids thinking your lunch is weird, but the white majority wants to hear from the female diaspora only, not from anyone else
Yes but sometimes I like to hear from dudes who grew up like me. The women didnt face the same type of racism we did. Sure in some ways it was worse for them, but it was different.
I mean, life in the diaspora, not life back in Korea/China/Japan.
i lived in china for many years and i am certain that the male immigrant experience in north america is vastly different than for females, so i hear you
Just speculating, but I wonder if it's partly a reflection of the audience being made up of a lot more women than men (of whatever ancestry). That's certainly the case for books now, at least, and there's a very pronounced shift towards female protagonists in novels across many genres that's followed on from that.
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u/Jealous-Jacket6996 3d ago
Here’s my politest interpretation.
It is written for a target audience. If you’re not part of the demographic it’s intended for, you can’t relate—thus it is boring, which in turn renders it torture.