ASA 002 A03
Week 4
I find this week's reading continues to focus on the topic of Asian American female's dilemma in academia. In the poem, "Who killed Soek-fang Sim?" by a scholar Wang Ping who shared the same backgrounds and experience with Soek-fang Sim. The short poem included Soek-fang's life experience, and how unequally treated by American academia. As a Chinese-Singaporean, the only "international" thing she had is the Ph.D. from London. But should it really be the reason why she has to be rumored? This poem is basically seeking the answer to this question. "Not good enough will never be good enough" is the line that touched me the most. As I mentioned last week, even though Asians are marked as "model minority", it is quite sarcastic that while they need to “maintain” such titles, they are required to make a tremendous effort to keep it otherwise they will be slandered as being incompetence. Sometimes Asians have to pay more than tenfold of the effort to achieve equal status as white scholars. I felt terrible when I read the sentences "I am dying from exhaustion, can't you tell...how I can work harder for you?" Either Soek-fang or Wang Ping, not until the day they have no strength to fight for equity, for the admitting that they are good enough to find the same status as the white colleagues, they are "still alive".
Question: From professor Wang's article, I notice that she said Soek-Fang is the top-notch professor in her college. Just curious, how the students who took her classes acted on such issues? Did they stand up for her?
Reference
Valverde, K.C., W.P. Fight the Tower: Asian American Women Scholars Resistance And Renewal in the Academy New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Picture retrieved from https://themacweekly.com/76468/news/professor-wang-ping-and-macalester-embroiled-in-legal-battle-2/ "Professor Wang Ping and Macalester Embroiled in Legal Battle"
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