‘So why wasn’t that enough? They’ve beaten the system. Why in God‘s name did they want to so badly to break it as well? Why bite the hand that fed you? Why throw it all away? ‘

I’ve really enjoyed how clearly the author is able to articulate the inner thoughts and reasoning of Letty here. I actually find so many parallels between Letty’s beliefs and older generations of Asian immigrants in the US. In their time, they were constantly inundated with the model minority myth, of achieving success and the allusive American Dream…but only if you assimilate — to suppress, remold and carve out parts of yourself that are different. Then you will win the game! You would finally have earned the respect of the white people and met all their expectations as a good, hardworking, civilized, no-trouble immigrant. Indeed, why would you ever want to dismantle a system when it determined that you were one of the “good ones”? It was always designed to make those who “make it” feel just a little bit more superior than their peers, and thus pitting people against each other despite their similarities.

‘“But that’s the great contradiction of colonialism.” Cathy uttered this like a simple matter of fact. “It’s built to destroy that which it prizes most.”’

A genuinely poignant statement. With all the efforts put in the strip other countries and cultures of their most valuable bits and pieces, colonizers are essentially bringing about the end of these things they purportedly find worthy. They find other cultures barbaric and uncivilized, yet they desperately hunger for other aspects of them. But by imposing and preaching western homogeneity, they are literally contributing to the decline of what they covet the most.

“There was something wrong with this argument, but once again, he could not figure out what.”

Twice now Robin has this feeling of “wrongness” that he can’t seem to pinpoint in his arguments with Lovell. As a Chinese woman from Hong Kong who studied political science at an elitist Ivy League institution, I cannot even begin to unpack how often this feeling comes up. Much of what I remember in the early days of undergrad involved my white (usually male) classmates AND professors justifying a multitude of abstract economic/political/international relations theories on some vague idealized version of liberty and freedom. Worse yet, I remember being told that I “can’t even begin to comprehend the intricacies of Chinese culture & political theories, let alone how they viewed Western powers in international relations” by a TA who had never so much as step foot outside continental US. It took years for me to dissect why it left a bad taste in my mouth.