Whenever I read books by Asian American authors (usually of East Asian ethnicity) about their identity, I’m drawn to the elements of their internal conversation: An incident occurs, like a conflict with one’s parents, or an abrupt encounter with a white or non-Asian person. Then, some time passes, a few minutes, a few days, or longer. And a review of the incident gets rehearsed: Not merely, “I should’ve done this.” Rather, some earnest attempt at interpreting the moment, the persons involved, and the present outcome. The recent book by Cathy Park Hong offers a poignant and unvarnished discovery of such a process. In this review, the book comes from the self-disclosure of four Asian American authors, all of whom identify themselves as followers of Jesus; their self-talk about their identities and how they process such are on full display and invite the reader into similar processes for forming their Asian American identity and a faith commitment in Jesus Christ.
This self-talk can be both an experience of condemnation, confusion, as well as affirmation and clarity. Sometimes all of the elements present at once. I mention this, as Learning Our Names: Asian American Christians on Identity, Relationships, and Vocation brings several versions of the internal conversation by all of the authors. All of the four authors write from a plural identity: as second generation Asian Americans, as evangelical campus ministers. (Full disclosure: I am colleagues with all four and friends of three of the authors.) In taking up the massive topic of identity formation, they’ve both narrowed their topics to not merely answering the question of “what’s an Asian American who follows Jesus” but to include consideration of family and friendship, as well as ecclesial life, work, and marital status. Anyone who has read academic accounts of identity formation for second generation persons of faith (any faith) will know that the triad of ethnicity, religion, and race all contribute in indeterminate ways to the formation of one’s identity. In some ways, the book recognizes the varying inputs, but wisely steers clear of the academic conversation in order to address Asian American young adults.
That’s not to say that the authors are unaware of the discussion of Asian American identity formation. The initial chapter of the book has the authors introduce themselves; this introduction helps as the authors give some sense of history in understanding their respective names. de Leon subsequently takes up questions of identity and culture, recognizing the complex entanglement of migration and labor, American military presence in East Asia, and the reaction of white Americans to migrant Asians starting in 1882 and the culpability of Asian American law enforcement in the present. This history sets up the rest of the book for grasping how some social precedents that are involuntarily encountered have varying degrees of influence upon the self-understanding of the emerging Asian American young adult, especially with regard to their Christian faith.
Daniel’s chapter on vocation offers a case study in how post-college employment discoveries, opportunities, and engagement with one’s family all lend to his identity formation. Ask any South Asian American person about the pressures from their migrant family/elders for fulfilling an upward-mobility life trajectory: “crushing” or some synonyms might emerge in response.
Thao’s chapter on religious diversity trades on some familiar responses to Romans 14 and 1 Cor. 8-10. But, unlike some missionary literature addressing engagement with other religious traditions, Thao reveals the network of encounters that are simultaneously emotional, familial, cognitive, social, and spiritual. Such lived encounters resist clear prescriptions as her story demonstrates. Thao also writes a chapter on singleness that offers well known critiques of how pulpits frame the human relationships as ultimately fulfilled in matrimony. Aside from those, Thao advances a spirituality of singleness that concurrently addresses singles who are Asian American Christian persons and other Christians. Her proposal stands out as a courageous and healthy contribution to identity formation. For those of us who have cringed on a Sunday morning hearing some version of “the model from creation,” Thao’s generous and sensitive approach lends healing and well being.
Although there are many more chapters to this book, the one by Chan has an explanation of racialization that offers one of the best discussions on the topic: academics looking for ways to make their scholarship public should read her chapter. The discussion here is succinct, but zeros in on the salient matters of anti-naming and bullying, overt exclusion and conditional belonging, as well as the enduring maliciousness of the perpetual foreigner status and the model minority myth. Because of the genre, Chan also offers some strong remedies for both external and internal resistance. Even if the academic reading this chapter section doesn’t have a dog in the hunt with the Christian tradition, these proposals do what often the academics do not: offer remedies that heal and empower Asian American identity formation. Surely these should be commended.
A strong sense of history permeates all of the chapters: How could any discussion of Asian American identity formation, Christian or otherwise, avoid such? Besides recounting stories of life “back home” and of the motives for migration by one’s parents and family, this genre would be incomplete if it did not commend practices that would be beneficial to one’s identity as both a Christian and an Asian American. Here is where I want to engage these authors to consider how they understand time and change.
Daniel’s chapter on vocation also offers a good reference point for this engagement. He describes a history of informing his parents about his sense of calling to serve as a campus minister, which his parents reject. Five plus years later, his parents announce they commend his sense of calling, and this event contributes to Daniel starting a new career in ministry. Thao mentions her brothers marrying out, and their efforts to give their mom a long on ramp of time to become acquainted with their prospective brides. There are others, but all suffer from too much brevity
In studies of second generation religious persons, it is almost a given that the social and cultural contrast of life for those persons and their parents will emerge in the investigation. To wit, the migrant children are often socially positioned among white and/or English-speaking people outside their home; in the home, the culture is of their migrant parents. In contrast, the migrant parents are often in partial social isolation from western culture and may not need to speak in English.
What some scholarship has found punctures the notion that the migrant parents are indeterminately “fixed” in their Asian cultural life: Most of these parents are routinely confronted by western culture that, just like their children, raises questions, objections, affirmations, and requests for commitments. It is that they have a lower frequency of encounters and the time duration is longer for parents between such encounters than for the second generation offspring, for whom such encounters overlap in time and arrive at a higher frequency. But, that difference does not keep the parents from adapting. Far from it. The length of time for learning a new culture tends to be greater for the migrant parents.
It is worth observing that the western evangelical practices host a pedagogy of urgency. Contemplation on vocational decisions, discerning a marriage partner, and especially a decision to enter into a conversion to the Christian faith: all these and more are promoted to be done in haste within the western evangelical tradition. Parallel to Daniel’s story are other Asian American evangelical students who have entered a similar conversation with their parents, aiming to declare their intention to serve as a campus minister and wanting to receive their parent’s blessings. Many of these earnest and winsome students begin at a standing-start in such a conversation with their parents. Their parents simply haven’t had the time and space of discerning and digesting how their children have lived on campus as witnesses and servants of Christ. The response of the parents can be far more elaborate and hostile than that of Daniel, even if the parents come from the Christian faith.
In a different space, I learned of one such Asian American student, and the joy among my colleagues was great. Here was a dedicated student, fruitful in ministry, that wanted to join our staff team. And the parents knew absolutely nothing about how the student had conducted ministry on campus while living as an undergraduate. The conversation outcome not only produced broken trust with the parents, but the instantaneous switch of shame turned on, and the staff team found itself isolated from the student. My reaction was shared by others: that we had generated pressure to immediately join our ministry. This pedagogy of urgency deserved a stronger critique from the authors. My hunch is that they have stronger narratives to call upon: stories that both received all of the theological virtues and resisted this pervasive sense of “do it now” that saturates western evangelicalism.
I commend this book to everyone, as it hardly helps to slot the valuable discussion and encouragement to only Asian American young adults. But, I’d want all the readers and the subsequent discussions to take their time for reflection and the building of trust. The learning of one’s name can come from a variety of experiences and relationships; the practices commended by the authors lend themselves to receiving that variety. Asian American young adults can become comfortable with both the leisure and the awareness of the many social forces promoting change: Transitions can be planned for with one’s family and friends, but rarely can such changes be completely managed. Consequently, their identity is not fixed from history and the contemporary social milieu, but they can responsibly contribute to the formation of their ethnic identity and their faith commitment.
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