2019
He introduced us to a 25-pound brick of clay [Popula]

2018
The Perfection Treadmill
Edited: Dolores Barclay

[Master’s Project Excerpt]

Erika Ramos needed a day of silence, a day to herself where she could people-watch and dream. So she hopped a train at Grand Central Station and headed north to Dia: Beacon to feed her soul with art.

90 minutes later, she arrived in Beacon, N.Y., and walked in the crisp autumn air to the museum to see works by On Kawara and Walter De Maria.

Each artist had a room, allowing visitors to explore the dedicated space the way the artist intended. De Maria’s space had two, long red carpets that spanned the length of a large room. Glossy white panels sat on the extended red fabric; the forms looked like they were generated by a computer. Kawara’s paintings were pristine and minimal, the brushstrokes nearly devoid of human touch.

Being in a room with only one artist’s work felt uninterrupted and pure to the 24-year-old. The no photo policy and little foot traffic at the museum gave her the freedom to be engulfed by someone else’s thinking.

“I found it really lovely, this moment of perfection. You have to have it to yourself,” she says.

Ramos felt at peace. She had spent the day exactly the way she wanted, and absorbing art was her happy place. Having minimal interaction with people, meant she didn’t need to “perform,” which was her biggest relief.

Art is the blueprint for her life: She studied industrial design at Pratt Institute of Design and design is embedded in how she navigates the world. Design emphasizes detail, and Ramos likes the accuracy and meticulousness of the discipline.

Yet there was a time when the need for precision was a source of pain. While the elements of perfection were attractive, the expectations of needing to execute with exactness started to bleed into her life. She struggled throughout her adolescence and into young adulthood with the demands of perfection. Being a Filipino American only exacerbated her problem.

It is a problem she shares with other young Asian Americans: the model minority stereotype.

“Model minority,” a phrase used to identify successful and assimilated Asian Americans, is often used to divide and compare other minority communities in the United States. While it has been deconstructed and disproved by experts, its consequences and harmful ripple effects continue to paralyze many. The myth adds a heavy layer of stereotyping identifiers and expectations for young Asian Americans.

Though the pressure is measured differently in individual lives, it can interfere with passions, curiosity, the desire to explore and brings even graver consequences, like suicide. In some, there is a self-induced anxiety, while others appear to have well-adjusted lives. Some may have low self-esteem, while others actively dodge stereotypes. Sometimes, the pressure comes from within — the push to be the best. In other cases, the pressure is external — from parents who will need financial support in the future or demand that children adhere to cultural standards, or being infantilized in the workplace.

To be a person of color or from an immigrant family in the United States is to face such obstacles and even more on a daily basis. Asian Americans have their own set of cultural nuances. To be Asian American is an internal negotiation between desires to be free and the abandonment of a unique identity for societal acceptance and filial responsibility.

This success sometimes comes at the cost of muting oneself, without the emotional, mental, social or financial capital to bolster that success.

***
 Brian Chow, 25, whose family was originally from the Fujian province in China, was one of few minorities at his school in Marblehead, Massachusetts, a small coastal New England town. His parents owned one of the two Chinese food restaurants in Marblehead. His classmates weren’t intolerant of cultural differences but they weren’t the most open-minded, either. Kids at school called him names to point out his “otherness.” Looking back, Chow says he may have been too sensitive. “I made a bigger deal out of it than it was. To be honest, I was super awkward. I am still awkward.”

Chow, like Ramos, pursued an art degree in animation in New York but returned home at the urging of his parents when he didn’t find an immediate job after graduating. He turned to IT.

“It’s expected that I support the family,” he says. “As being the male of my family, I’m pretty much the only one supporting the family. But I should be the one who does — I’m the heir to the name, I’m one of the last Chows left.”

He felt pressure from both himself and his family to be the model child and follow a specific path. Many young Asian Americans must cope with parents’ expectations and the discrimination of others. Few seek counseling to help with anxiety or depression.

***
 The counseling center at University of Texas at Austin provides a team of culturally diverse coordinators and mental health counselors, available to students ranging from Asian American to black American to Hispanic to LGBTQ to international students.

Dr. Mona Ghosheh, a psychologist who counseled Asian American students when she worked at the Austin campus, says students struggled with pressures and navigating stereotypes that were obvious and not so obvious, while balancing the demands of performing academically.

Asian American students are less likely to go to a mental health center to seek help because of the cultures in which they were raised, she says. They will first go to faculty, friends or mentors before ever stepping foot into a counseling center on campus.

Knowing and understanding cultural differences helped the school accommodate and meet needs for students struggling with anxiety or depression. The counseling center worked with faculty and staff to look for subtle signs from students which can look different depending on cultural backgrounds. Some Asian Americans will make an extra effort to appear normal when experiencing difficulty in their lives, she said.

“It is so infused in our minds,” Ghosheh says, noting that many professors sometimes assume that if an Asian American student is getting good grades, looking physically well and stylishly dressed, a mood swing is “just a bad day.” This, she says, is “downplaying in our minds what Asian American students are going through because of the myth that they’re doing great. They have the skill sets! It might not be a conscious thing — it’s just how it plays out.”

Even friends of students can overlook symptoms and think, “They’ll be fine. They’ll be fine.’“

The model minority stereotype can affect individuals not only emotionally, but physically too, Ghosheh says. Asian American students, in many cases, will experience somatic symptoms and go to the health center or a doctor to handle it rather than address it as an emotional issue.

“When someone is feeling depressed or feeling anxious, it might manifest in having really terrible migraines or stomach distress,” she says. “We would see that a big majority of Asian American students with mental health concerns would first go to the health center, and see the physician first. They’d be having poor concentration, low appetite. We know those are symptoms of depression and anxiety.”

To help with the problem, the university has put health services and the counseling center in the same building. If the campus physician notices a student with symptoms that might be related to anxiety or depression, a counselor down the hall is more accessible, mitigating any feelings of shame, secrecy or cultural stigma that may be associated with going to see a mental health worker.