Passing for Perfect

“As an Asian American daughter of immigrants, reading Passing for Perfect, I felt my life understood. erin Khuê Ninh has explained our plight—the mad scramble for refuge, the guilt over our parents’ sacrifices, and our trust that education will save us. This book will give us strength against the attackers who blame us for what’s wrong with America. We shall overcome violence with knowledge.”—Maxine Hong Kingston

“Passing for Perfect is lively, timely, and smart. It engages intriguing case studies of Asian Americans who maintained the charade of being admitted to elite colleges in order to expose the tolls surrounding racial stereotyping. Ninh conveys the significance of these impersonations without giving in to their salacious details. Rather, she seeks systemic explanations for individual behaviors while providing keen insights into the ways that racialization works as a form of psychic conditioning.”—Leslie Bow, Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of English and Asian American Studies and Draheim Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison

“In Passing for Perfect, Ninh has written an important and provocative book about Asian American college imposters that implicates the aspirational nature of the model minority identity within some Asian American communities. Writing against scholars who argue that the model minority is a myth, Ninh asserts, ‘That which is partially true is not a myth (problematic or inconvenient, yes; uncalibrated or misleading, quite possibly; roundly deniable, no).’ This book should be read by scholars in ethnic studies and education, Asian American parents, and Asian Americans who have struggled to achieve model minority success.”—Stacey J. Lee, Frederick Erickson Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation Professor of Educational Policy Studies and Faculty Affiliate in Asian American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison

"In a publishing environment where scholars are encouraged to imagine an audience beyond their field of specialization, Ninh’s conceit of a specifically Asian American reader challenges the conventions of the scholarly monograph. Her study seeks neither to spurn a stereotype nor to offer a truer alternative but to solicit a readerly reckoning. Instead of assuming a solidarity predicated on the mutual rejection of the model minority’s inauthenticity and complicity, Ninh binds scholar and reader through a mutual recognition of the emotional yearnings, social expectations, and family dynamics that motivate seemingly preposterous acts of passing."—American Literary History

"Ninh examines the pressures of perfection and addresses the more significant issue of the 'model minority' as an identity. This engaging text offers readers a passing view of life for Asian Americans and provides a glimpse into why this phenomenon occurs.... Passing for Perfect tells a remarkable story full of cultural complexities that examines case studies and concludes with introspection.... Summing Up: Recommended."—Choice

"Ninh convincingly argues that it is not pathological tiger parenting at the root cause of such inward- and outward-directed model minoritarian violence but the ideology of neoliberalism, which developed concurrently with the contemporary model minority. Altogether, Ninh has given us astonishing particularities to illustrate an uncomfortable universal, theorizing the college impostor as a figure inseparable from contemporary Asian America, and challenging us to find the college impostors that lurk within us and to treat them with compassion rather than disavowal."—Journal of Asian American Studies