261: How I Stopped Being a Model Minority, with Anne Anlin Cheng

Dear White Women

Today’s episode seems to be addressing this question: does politics show up in our everyday lives? Maybe even in our most intimate relationships?

And while a lot of folks may be saying politics doesn’t impact me, I don’t do politics… we think the actual answer for most of us in this country is a resounding YES (in fact, we’ve recorded whole episodes and written whole book chapters on this very topic!). Yes, politics impacts our daily lives, including being in our marriages, our parent-child relationships, and more.

We’re privileged to have this conversation with someone who took the chance to use her voice in a new way - moving from academia and diving bravely into personal essays - in order to help us all hear one person’s journey confronting the Model Minority Myth that so many Asian folks in America are impacted by, and inspiring us along the way.

What to listen for:

• The challenge in determining where the forces that shape us end, and the “real us” begins - especially when it comes to deconstructing the Model Minority Myth, or even untangling ourselves from notions like the American Dream

• How politics shows up in our most intimate relationships - including marriage

• Examples of how white folks can show up, or not, for issues around multiculturalism

• Where our education system is having to go to meet the population where they are when it comes to talking about politics - we’re now back to discussing civility, empathy, what it means to be a citizen, and the common good

About our guest:

Anne Anlin Cheng was born in Taiwan, grew up in the American South, and is the author of three books on American racial politics and aesthetics. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Cheng is the 2023–2024 Ford Scholar in Residence at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She is a professor of English and a former director of American Studies at Princeton University and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.