"Paper Tigers," Wesley Yang

Are you Asian-American? Then you must read Yang's article in New York magazine.

“The loudest duck gets shot” is a Chinese proverb. “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down” is a Japanese one. Its Western correlative: “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.”

Going along to get along is a strategy with built-in limits in an individualistic society like the U.S., but it is the strategy that Asian cultures inculcate with great success, even when the subjects have never set foot in an Asian country.

Interestingly, although Yang cites story after story reinforcing the need to break the Asian cultural straitjacket from within, he is ambivalent about putting in place yet another strategy-for-success for himself:

I see the appeal of getting with the program. But this is not my choice. Striving to meet others’ expectations may be a necessary cost of assimilation, but I am not going to do it.

Often I think my defiance is just delusional, self-glorifying bullshit that artists have always told themselves to compensate for their poverty and powerlessness. But sometimes I think it’s the only thing that has preserved me intact, and that what has been preserved is not just haughty caprice but in fact the meaning of my life.

Sounds like Yang is yet another passing stranger. More power to him.