Editor's note: This review was originally published in San Francisco Review of Books.
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| Jay Caspian Kang |
Asian American identity is complicated by generational experiences and economic aspirations in a society that primarily views race from the perspectives of Blacks and Whites. This is the thesis that Jay Caspian Kang lays out in The Loneliest Americans, a piercing and thought-provoking read that combines personal accounts and self-scrutiny with a crash history course about the fastest-growing racial group in the United States. Asians are the loneliest Americans because, despite painful attempts at assimilation, society is indifferent to invisibility and racial violence endured by the vast diasporic community, especially the working poor and others who are living in poverty.
This book is a compelling read for Asian Americans of all generations who are navigating current racial dynamics, distinct from the immigrant’s optimism toward America’s promises of freedom, democracy, and capitalism. His appeal to Asians about forging a social identity informed by race and class consciousness is prudent. Reading Kang’s text from the lens of a Filipino immigrant who has been a part of pan-Asian solidarity movements, I understand the melancholy of finding a place in America’s complex racial stratification. By sharing many personal anecdotes, Kang gives the reader a palpable way to empathize with all-too-common Asian American experiences of being perceived as a high-achieving model minority, while also being held back because of racism.
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