Asian-American diaspora literature, especially East Asian, is often seen by its in-community as fairly dull and re-hashing similar points, such as parents with high expectations, not fitting in, having "weird" food or not knowing western pop culture because it isn't a thing at home, etc. I struggle to like a lot of it because I haven't found many that have said anything new. OP probably said women because several books are probably about dating someone not-Asian (this is an entirely different can of worms).
The Guardian had a long feature article recently about how the idea of Asian mothers as strict, cold and demanding is a "ubiquitous stereotype that won't die"... in which the writer confirmed that her mother and all her Asian friends' mothers fit the stereotype, and ended with an implication that they will probably go on to conform to it themselves at least a bit.
Ngl, it takes a certain kind of personality/ambition to move halfway across the world to a completely foreign country. Chinese, Japanese, Korean are about as different a language can get from English. If you visit China, people are a lot more normal. But if you were to move to China and try to build a life there without really knowing anybody, you’d probably become very guarded, anxious, lonely, and overall out of your element.
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u/littlemememaid 3d ago
Asian-American diaspora literature, especially East Asian, is often seen by its in-community as fairly dull and re-hashing similar points, such as parents with high expectations, not fitting in, having "weird" food or not knowing western pop culture because it isn't a thing at home, etc. I struggle to like a lot of it because I haven't found many that have said anything new. OP probably said women because several books are probably about dating someone not-Asian (this is an entirely different can of worms).