erin Khuê Ninh: Model Child / Model Minority

In this conversation, I speak with erin Khuê Ninh.

erin has some really important ideas about the Asian immigrant family that are a bit confronting and perhaps truth telling.  She argues that the Asian immigrant family is a form of a capitalist production unit, producing “model children” who strikingly resemble the model minority. 

Some of the topics we talk about:

• the themes of debt and repayment
• how the model minority might not be myth after all
• how love is interlaced with power
• Asian American racialization vs subjectification

If you are a second generation, child of Asian immigrants, you ought to listen. erin has a message for you.

erin Khuê Ninh is Professor and Chair of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She writes about the model minority as racialization and subject formation (not myth). Her books are Passing for Perfect: College Impostors and Other Model Minorities, and Ingratitude: The Debt-Bound Daughter in Asian American Literature.  Along with Shireen Roshanravan, she edited #WeToo: A Reader, a special issue on sexual violence for the Journal of Asian American Studies. She is a Leo, an eldest daughter, and not a dog person. Make of that what you will.