Fifteen UC Santa Barbara students sit around a table in a Social Sciences building conference room, laptops open, glancing at the case studies and scholarly articles pulled up on their screens.

Then Asian American Studies professor erin Khue Ninh poses a question to her seminar class in Asian American Intergenerational Conflict: “If you keep pushing yourself to meet parental expectations of success, then when will it end? Will it ever be enough?”

Silence hangs in the room for a beat before hands begin to rise, each student ready to draw connections between what they are reading about Asian parenting styles and their own experiences growing up amid stereotypical expectations that they will be at the top of the class just because they are Asian.

What might seem an uncomfortable or intrusive question is for Ninh a vital prompt for discussion. She is routinely asked personal questions in this room of just 15 students. Collectively, they study intergenerational conflict, or the unaddressed trauma that took place prior to and during the immigration of Asians to the United States, which in turns affects their children — and their children’s studies. The intimate discussion environment encourages students to use their own family and community experiences to deconstruct ideas of success across races and ethnicities.

I read through the articles about the model-minority myth, a stereotype that asserts that Asian Americans are intelligent, hard-working, and diligent. I listened to my peers talk about feeling overwhelmed by parental pressure, and I could only think about how this shared pressure to get the best grades, and pay back our parents for all their sacrifices, had become a common thread. I could only think about the days when my own parents would ask why I didn’t get a higher score, or if I was still interested in pursuing a career in medicine or law.

As a second year undergraduate Writing & Literature major, this class was the perfect place to begin to deconstruct the model-minority myth as a framework for intergenerational conflict. Stories about my parents’ immigration and my own pursuit of praise have forged the direction of my writing. My dad, who escaped from war-torn Cambodia, came with little to nothing to the United States. My mom lived in a tiny apartment in Singapore, sewing clothes and studying hard before moving across the world. I pieced together their stories of growing up, coming to America, and raising my brother and me. I developed a greater understanding of my family ancestry and some of the unspoken trauma that had turned into well-meaning pressure for my own success.

In this class, while I watched my moslty social science-oriented peers discuss the effects of intergenerational conflict through the lens of psychology and sociology, I found myself stuck. How does a writing major study what Asian American intergenerational trauma looks like when my data is found in books, literary magazines, and online publications?

Tia Trinh on a beach near UC Santa Barbara

But after a discussion with Ninh about my thoughts on a writing project, I came up with my theme: an exploration of my identity as an Asian American youth by way of personal narrative. Memories of late-night arguments over supposed procrastination, and the disconnect between how my parents treated my brother and how they treated me, moved to the forefront of my creative writing. I reflected upon years of built-up frustrations over never feeling like I could meet the expectations of my parents.

Though they never really said them aloud, these requirements were clear in my head: get high grades, get into a good school, get the right degree that will lead to the right job in a well-paying career. Then, I will never have to worry about money, housing, and job security the way my parents did. “We sacrificed so much for you, don’t be ungrateful.” The echo of their words stuck with me. I felt guilty for talking about my experiences publicly, breaking through the silence that had haunted me for years, but I would be lying if I said it wasn’t like lifting a pressure from my shoulders.

Ninh encouraged the class to break down concepts such as academic pressure and silence instead of discord, that fit into the framework of intergenerational conflict. The class broke down these concepts through the chapters of Ninh’s book “Passing for Perfect,” which explores the cyclical nature of the intergenerational conflict in Asian American families. This included the collective experiences shared by my classmates and me.

The small, yet close-knit environment of a seminar class meant that my peers and I could share and discuss our personal stories in relation to the class material. This included discussions about feeling guilty for not living up to parents’ expectations and feeling viewed as a failure for not wanting to pursue a profession such as doctor or lawyer.

Ninh has stressed that she has never intended the class to be a “middle finger to your parents.” Instead, it asked us to reevaluate and breakdown the model-minority myth and the stereotypes that have followed us through our educational careers thus far. The classroom became an open environment to understand how physical trauma can be passed down emotionally and vice versa.

Today, the Asian immigrant story is shifting towards the younger generation and the aftermath of years of academic pressure and guilt. I still find myself referencing Ninh’s book and the articles on studies about parenting styles, and girls who pretended to go to college to appease their parents. As Ninh writes in her book, we, the students in her class and many others in university, can be considered “second-generation Asian Americans as a genuine intimate public: strangers who can spot each other’s stories between the lines, and read each other’s pain.”