Standing Out, Fitting in, Speaking Up, Making Space, Finding Peace: My Life as an Asian/Asian American/Woman/Immigrant/Scholar/Leader

• In Event: Asian/American Women Navigating Academia: Challenges, Opportunities, and New Perspectives

Abstract

Objectives
The purpose of this paper is to explore definitions of leadership from a so-called “Asian American” perspective, through raced, gendered, trans- and inter-national lenses. I insert the term “so-called” to bring “attention to the category ‘Asian’ [which] challenges the binary understandings of racial constructions” (Maeda, 2000, p. 85), and to begin to chip at the hegemonic façade of a monolithic nomination that blends all Asians and Pacific Islanders (APIs) into one “Universal Oriental” (Goodwin et al. 1997). As the fastest growing racial(ized) group in the United States, APIs represent numerous multiplicities in terms of language, culture, traditions, and pre-immigrant (and/or colonization) histories. As an Asian American, Singaporean, South East Asian, Chinese, first-generation adult immigrant, who is also an intermediately bilingual, biracial, (now) middle-class, woman, daughter, teacher and leader, I embody the diversities inherent in the social construction “Asian American/Pacific Islander” and actively defy any uni-dimensional labels. Subsequently, any notions of leadership, scholarship or success that I might share, can only be explained in equally diverse ways, framed by a life lived in-between numerous borders and multi-cultural realities.

Perspectives
Historically, APIs have been assigned many “fixed realities” (Bhabha, 1996). During the 19th and 20th centuries, Asians were “invading ‘yellow hordes’…victims of…repressive, vicious and humiliating acts of racism” (Suzuki, 1995, p. 113). Other familiar depictions include APIs as faithful servant or sidekick, cruel and evil villain, naive woman-child, buck-toothed dolt, sexualized whore (Goodwin, 2010). These social imaginings position APIs as subaltern (Spivak, 1988) and render us voiceless. APIs are further silenced by our reinvention as “model” minorities, symbolic evidence of an equitable, non-racist America. Throughout our U.S. sojourn, these dominant discourses have effectively isolated APIs as the “Other Other ” (Talmy, 2005), fashioned us into caricatures, and sanctioned the (mis)representation, definition, and translation of the API community. Yet, the simple act of speaking the existence of multiplicities of lived experiences, identities, and histories, “challenge[s] a dominant discourse by ‘resurrecting’ the victimized voice/self of the native” (Chow, 1996, p. 129) and interrupts any space where we have been silenced.

Methodology
Narrative inquiry is the most appropriate methodology for an examination of leadership framed by an agentic life deliberately aimed at standing out, fitting in, speaking up, making space, and finding peace. Collectively, these stances represent my life-long goal to act versus re-act, to name myself in my own process of becoming. Many questions undergird my inquiry—what is leadership to me? Who am I as a leader? How did the I that is me get to where I am? Where else am I going?

Significance
Once a different reality is revealed, “we have voice and the courage to question” (Wink, 2005. p. 32) any “American” story in which we are not present. Broad stroke sweeps through (or past) racial groups cannot be allowed to continue. We can no longer maintain a “culture of silence” (McLaren, 1994, p. 306), but must be moved to act.

Author

• A. Lin Goodwin, Teachers College, Columbia University