Everyone hates mainstream Asian American culture right now. Everything Everywhere All At Once not only won too much of everything everywhere all at once, but it also did so very Millennially, complete with weepy parental apologies and Reddit humour. The 2nd generation Asian American summit was reached, and the long-standing fight for media representation lost whatever shield of pioneering idealism it once enjoyed.
In late February, there was online fervour over a new short story published in The Georgia Review entitled “Hatchling” by Rucy Cui.3 For anyone familiar with contemporary Asian American literary fiction, “Hatchling” is nothing out of the ordinary. All the familiar tropes are there: a straight Asian American female protagonist, memories of weird and/or abusive parents, interpersonal annoyances involving a white boyfriend, on-the-nose incidents of racism, and a pervasive mood of resigned melancholy. If you asked a squad of 2010s Asian American literary fiction connoisseurs to identify a short story or novel that contains these elements, each could come up with a different but correct answer. Some may call this type of writing diaristic, but I imagine reading someone’s diary would be a riveting experience.
But what was extraordinary about “Hatchling” was the widespread mockery the story received. In the past, only a few Asian American men would’ve complained and then be dismissed as misogynists. However this time, everyone was expressing the same exasperation over why this cliched and boring type of story kept being foisted on us again and again and again. People have eyes and ears, and the truth will be said aloud eventually.
As someone who’d gotten into a lot of trouble in the 2010s for criticizing narratives like “Hatchling,” I found this whole episode extremely cathartic. Back in 2022, Current Affairs published my essay, “Asian American Psycho,”4 which attacked Asian American culture for being capable of only producing stories like “Hatchling.” Based on a previous experience, I was half-expecting the magazine to apologize for, or even pull, my piece due to public outcry. When that didn’t happen, I knew that something had changed.