Model Minority Masochism: Performing the Cultural Politics of Asian American Masculinity

There are few grand narratives that loom over Asian Americans more than the model minority. While many Asian Americanist scholars and activists aim to disprove the model minority as myth, author Takeo Rivera instead rethinks the model minority as cultural politics. Rather than disproving the model minority, Rivera instead argues that Asian Americans have formulated their racial and gendered subjectivities in relation to what Rivera terms model minority masochism. Examining hegemonic masculine Asian American cultural performance across multiple media, from literature and theater to videogames and activist archives, Rivera details two complementary forms of contemporary racial masochism: a self-subjugating masochism which embraces the model minority, and its opposite, a self-flagellating masochism that punishes oneself for having been associated with the model minority at all.