Marin-Baena 1 Marlen Marin-Baena Logan Maertens English 100 04 October 2013 Breaking Away Stereotypes hurt peoples feelings

because its sad to think that others generalize ones culture based on false statements. Stereotypes have been around for a very long time and, as sad as this sounds, arent going away any time soon because people will always use them no matter how ridiculous and false they are. As Wesley Yang suggests, instead of following the stereotypes people need to be unique and work against the stereotype and prove it false. Stereotypes are absurd and false and yet it affects everyone because stereotypes dont reflect the complexity of the culture. Yangs purpose of the essay was to inform readers of how Asian-Americans feel about the stereotypes toward them and that they are false statements. He wanted to break away of his culture and not follow the stereotypes toward Asian-Americans. Yang states, let me summarize my feelings toward Asian values: Fuck filial piety. Fuck grade-grubbing. Fuck Ivy League mania. Fuck deference to authority. Fuck humility and hard work. Fuck harmonious relations. Fuck sacrificing for the future. Fuck earnest, striving middle-class servility (Yang 533). This shows Yangs dislike toward Asian values and his defiance against them. He hates stereotypes because they are unfair and false. His audience could be anyone because stereotypes affect every culture, but specifically he wanted to let other Asian-Americans know that they dont have to live up to the expectations of their culture. That they can do what they want and not only what their parents want. They dont have to be that Asian-American who fits perfectly the description of the stereotype towards them. Yang states, this is what I suspect my face signifies to other

Marin-Baena 2 Americans: an invisible person, barely able to distinguish from a mass of faces that resemble it (Yang 533). This shows that stereotypes made him feel less of a person compared to Americans. Furthermore, its sad for anyone to think that they are invisible to others and this shows how stereotypes are negative for causing the people affected by stereotypes to think less of themselves. Stereotypes make people tend to think first about the stereotypes they know about them instead of their actual culture. Yang was hurt by the stereotypes towards Asian-Americans and he felt like everyone thought all Asians looked the same. He states another stereotype towards them about how all Asians are smart and score high on exams and get into the finest colleges in the nation. He realized that yes, many Asians in fact do follow that stereotype and thats what annoyed him the most. Even though many did have higher education at prestigious schools, many were still not being successful in the real world. Yang states, according to a recent study, Asian-Americans represent roughly 5 percent of the population but only 0.3 percent of corporate officers, less than 1 percent of corporate board members, and around 2 percent of college presidents. There are nine Asian-American CEOs in the Fortune 500 (Yang 540). This fact that Yang included in his essay helps the reader to understand and see Yangs point, that it may be true that Asian-Americans are doing exceptionally well from K-12 all the way to the university, but not in the real world. There was something obviously wrong. This was due, in part, to how their parents raised them. Its not entirely the parents fault because of course everyone has a right to live their lives the way the y choose to do it, but because Asian-Americans were raised that way by their parents, its all they know and thats why so many keep following in those steps. Yang says that Asian parents are probably the strictest ones around since they enforce the importance of scoring high on exams in

Marin-Baena 3 order to be accepted into a prestigious school. And in order to score high many Asian-Americans were forced to be studying all the time, which meant no time to socialize with friends. Thats where the mistake was, not letting their children be social. Sach Takayasu states in Yangs essay, my parents would say, dont create problems. Dont trouble other people. How Asian is that? It helped to explain why I dont reach out to other people for help (Yang 542). They may have a lot of knowledge from all the hard work they went through, but they keep to themselves, which is not a skill people need if they want to be successful in life. There are a lot of Asian-Americans who are not being successful in the real world because they dont know how to prepare for a job interview, they dont know how to talk with important people and make connections, and the list goes on. This is why Yang didnt want to live up to the stereotypes and the reason why he wrote his essay. Although Yang is Korean he says he doesnt fit in with his culture and instead describes himself as a banana or a Twinkie (yellow on the outside, white on the inside) (Yang 533). This shows how he feels more American than Korean. He doesnt speak his native language and doesnt call his elders by the proper honorifics. He also mentions that he doesnt have a Korean friend and that he has never gone out with a Korean woman. Yang is trying to stress that although he is Asian, he only knows American customs. Throughout his essay, he makes it clear to his readers that he absolutely dislikes stereotypes. That they are false statements and that they make not only Asian-Americans feel bad about themselves, but anyone affect by a stereotype feels the same way. As yang puts it, we will need more people with the same kind of defiance, willing to push themselves into the spotlight and to make some noise, to beat people up, to seduce women, to make mistakes, to become entrepreneurs, to stop doggedly pursuing official

Marin-Baena 4 paper emblems attesting to their worthiness, to stop thinking those scraps of paper will secure anyones happiness, and to dare to be interesting (Yang 549).