Good Chinese Girls and the Model Minority: Race, Education, and Community in Girl in Translation and Front Desk

Abstract

The girl protagonists in Jean Kwok’s Girl in Translation and Kelly Yang’s Front Desk embody and reinterpret the notion of guai (loosely translated as “good”) in their struggle to adapt to life in America. Guai is the most important concept governing childhood in Chinese societies. The word, often used to praise children, denotes obedience, docility, the acceptance of authority and conformity to accepted norms of behaviour. This essay explores how familial, racial and institutional forces impinge on and reshape the protagonists’ understanding of what it means to be a “good Chinese girl” to push beyond analyses of Asian American texts for young people as perpetuating or challenging the idea of the model minority. Given the significance of guai in the lives of Chinese American children, it is necessary to analyse how specific Asian cultural logics are adapted to the American context. Discussions about Asian American identities must not only explicate the “American-ness” of characters’ choices but also consider the ways in which “Chineseness” shapes, constitutes and diversifies the “Asian” in what it means to be an Asian American.