Gabriel Yap, ASA 002 A02, Week 2

Gabriel Yap ASA 002 A02, Week 2

While reading “Fight the Tower: Women of Color in Academia Manifesto ix Prologue: Taking Action: Asian American Faculty against Injustices in the Academy.” by Shirley Hune, I found myself constantly being able to relate the things that she writes about to my own life. She mainly writes about Asian-Americans and their background in education and society's general perception of Asian-Americans.

One of the things that Hune writes about in this prologue that stuck out the most to me was when she says "Asian Americans strive to achieve academically and to attend college both
to fulfill their parents’ aspirations and sacrifices to make a better life for their families and to pursue the American Dream for themselves, like other Americans"(6). I found this particular sentence to be extremely relatable to my own life. As I'm sure many other Asian-Americans can relate, I've been told countless times by my parents of all their sacrifices they have made in order for their children to live a better life in America. They will force education down your throat at a young age so that you can have more opportunities than they had when they were younger. With strong academic performance, one can get into a good college and secure a well-paying job with the college degree. 

This is the standard way to make your Asian parents proud. You graduate from a prestigious university and get a stable well-paying job. I think to many Asian-Americans, this is one of the main reasons why education plays such an important role in our lives. We subconsciously associate education to a source of pride for our parents and ourselves knowing we made our parents proud. 



My question is: For the fortunate Asian-Americans who come to America with a lot of money, is education still greatly emphasized by the parents if the "American dream" is already reached because the family is already wealthy?


Reference:
Valverde, K.-L. C., & Dariotis, W. M. (2020). Fight the tower: Asian American women scholars resistance and renewal in the academy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

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