(Image from GhanaClass.com)
The Atlantic Monthly recently published an essay entitled, "The Burden of Being Asian American on Campus." In it, Julia Wang details the recent influx of Chinese international students onto college campuses in America. Chinese international students are attractive to financially challenged American colleges; those that are accepted to American schools are at the top of their class, and they pay full tuition as financial aid is usually reserved for domestic applicants. Chinese international students, in turn, find that an American degree boosts their earning power back in China.
While the increase in Chinese international students is mutually beneficial to the colleges and the students, it poses an unexpected complication for students of Asian origin that were born in America. Despite their American citizenship, they are now more likely to be stereotyped as foreigners, and share in the increasing animus that faces Chinese international students.
Wang's essay is conflicted; she and her friends decry being lumped together with "rich Chinese foreigners," but at the same time they acknowledge a shared history and pan-Asian culture, as well as the opportunity to mobilize across within-group borders. Wang's complicated portrayal of being Asian American among foreign-born Asians embodies the sometimes tortuous navigation of identity, acculturation, and heritage that marks the maturation of Asian American young people today.