starting out with 2 suitcases and 500 dollars...

when i was in college, a friend of mine passed along a list that was called something like "the top 10 things you've heard from your asian parents." actually, most of the things on that list were things that i had heard growing up (e.g. walking barefoot uphill both ways to school, riding a bike 90 miles in the rain, etc). i forwarded it to a few of my other friends. they too, commented on its aptness.

given that our parents had similar experiences in life, it was no surprise that my friends and i often shared the same pains when it came down to our parents. but interestingly, i discovered that these difficulties didn't end for my friends and me when reached adulthood. 7 years ago, i found myself in a cafe griping with one of my childhood friends. we were both young, accomplished, educated, and miserable. oh, and arguing with our parents. that would have been expected if we were teenagers, but no. we were in our twenties, and the fighting was still going strong.

i said to her, "there's got to be something about this dynamic, it's like a syndrome. a syndrome of having asian parents or immigrant parents. the asian parent syndrome."

in the intervening years, i've noticed that the term 'asian parent syndrome' is popping up with increasing frequency on the internet. this supports my belief that this is a tangible, pervasive phenomena. not that i needed a search engine to tell me that, though; many of my 2nd generation asian friends and i have shared similar experiences related to our families. most of my friends are asian, probably because they understand my inveterate neuroticism, and why i'm always a little manic.

so the point of this blog is not to rail on our parents, or the asian culture, or the experiences we've had, but perhaps to create some common ground for discussing and understanding this so-called syndrome.

and that's another thing. i thought long and hard about the use of the word "syndrome". it seems so harsh... in my mind, syndromes seem to refer to immutable, chronic, genetic conditions. so i looked it up (thank you dictionary.com):

syn.drome: [sin-drohm, -druhm]Pathology,Psychiatry a group of symptoms that together are characteristic of a specific disorder, disease, or the like.

ok. that works.

of course, we don't mean here that being asian is a disorder or a disease. but maybe we can say that, in being the child of asian immigrant parents, we encountered disparate, if not completely conflicting values, and these conflicts resulted in a certain set of emotions. in light of this, we can loosely define the Asian Parent Syndrome as a pervasive need to achieve some sort of perfection, a nagging, seemingly irrefutable feeling of insufficiency and self-doubt, a deep love for, and desire to please one's parent and family, and guilt for being unable to do so.

so in this blog we are going to attempt to achieve a few things:
1. discuss the 2nd generation asian american experience from both a personal and analytical point of view
2. provide an open resource and forum
3. share the stories and experiences of young asian americans
4. explore the perspective of our parents, in the hopes of gaining some insight into the "why"

we hope to do this with respect and sensitivity for everyone in the situation, and with the end goal in helping everyone achieve a little more harmony in their life.