We Are Not Your Model Minority: Struggling, Reimagining, and Becoming Through Mother-Daughter Counterstorytelling

• In Event: DisCrit Mothering: Interrogating Consequential Education for Our Children's Lives and Humanity

Abstract

Purpose
White supremacy has weaponized the model minority myth – the belief that Asian Americans have “made it” despite obstacles – to invalidate claims of systemic racism and ableism against people of color; as such, the myth renders Asian Americans invisible unless to pit Asian Americans against other people of color and in perpetuating constructed ideas of normalcy, intelligence, interventions, and excellence that lead to differential access to power (Museus & Kiang, 2009). Using duoethnography, this paper explores and reflects on the collective learning between a nondisabled, Chinese American motherscholar and her neurodiverse fourteen year old daughter as we problematize the model minority myth during the pandemic. As we encountered the increased AsAm violence and fear, we asked: How does the model minority myth connect to recent attacks on the AsAm community and on others multiply marginalized? What might resistance look like that attends to and builds on stories of our strength and solidarity with others?

Theoretical Framework
We draw on DisCrit (Annamma et al., 2013, ParentCrit (DePouw & Matias, 2016), and Asian American Critical Race Theory (AsianCrit) (e.g., Iftikar & Museus, 2018) to examine the collective learning process as mother and daughter. The critical perspectives to parenting allow an analysis of interlocking systems of oppression and how it is embedded within lived experiences, knowledge systems, values, and practices as a family and within communities of color and for those multiply-marginalized.

Methods and Data Sources
We recognize the personal/professional/political emancipatory potential of duoethnographies (Mulvihill et al., 2022) allowing us to engage in critical reflexivity through the documentation and discussion of mo(ve)ments of revelation and self- and collective empowerment as we better understand how interlocking systems of racism and ableism operate in our daily lives. Data sources include digital letters written to each other and communal recollections throughout the last two years of the pandemic and the creation of a virtual zine capturing AsAm activists and community leaders by the teen.

Findings and Significance
For both of us, AsAm histories and identities, particularly the inclusion of disabled identities, are nonexistent in K-12 schools. Invisibility is painful. When you are not seen or recognized at all in school, you wonder your worth. Throughout our writing together, as daughter and mother, it was a process of unlearning, refusal to accept invisibility, and to consider ways we can (re)claim space in classrooms, schools, and the community that honors our elders and ourselves. The virtual zine was developed by the teen to recognize wholeness (the full history and life experience of AsAm communities), particularly those multiply marginalized. The project has evolved to the teen capturing oral histories of elders and leaders to study ways we can move beyond the socialization of racism and ableism, such as mobilizing against police violence, ways to commit to cross- movement organizing, and actionizing the disability justice framework.

Author

• Cathery Yeh, University of Texas Austin
  Presenting Author