Allison Zheng: Asian American Detective

 

 

What I love about the blogosphere are the happy discoveries:  silly cats; talented ten year olds; skateboard tricks that end in bodily injury.  Yesterday, I came across this stupendous little essay by Allison Zheng–Age 8—entitled “My Goal As An Asian American Detective.”  It won honorable mention for a contest put on by the Asian Pacific Fund.  It blew me away.

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In this beautifully written squib, Allison dates her passion for Detective Work to the moment when she discovered her mother was Santa Clause—an act of sleuthing that involved handwriting analysis, clues and inductive reasoning.  She then vividly describes the ins-and-outs of an alternative career path that will take her away from the timeworn trail followed by most Asian American kids:  doctoring, lawyering and accounting.  I wonder how her folks feel about this?

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In choosing this path, Allison expresses the noblest intentions.  She writes:

 

I really want to be a detective because I like to solve mysteries and help

people. I’ve heard and would like to help many families that have been

robbed or children who have been kidnapped and make our community

a safer place to live in. There are also lots mysteries during criminal

investigation that can be challenging I would like to solve when I grow up.

 

What lovely prose.  I certainly couldn’t write so confidently in third grade.  And what noble, lofty intentions—helping people.  Gosh, at that age, you couldn’t get me to even think about sharing my Legos.  I was a terribly self-centered child, an unflattering trait my mother reminded me of literally every day.  “You are a terrible little boy who only thinks of yourself.”  My mom would stand at the doorway with her hands on her hips as my little sister (she was such a crybaby and attention-seeker) blubbered over some small infringement.

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I was nothing like precocious, young Allison Zheng.  If I thought about kidnappings or robberies, it was only to perpetrate these acts upon my little sister’s Barbie Dolls—all of whom could be returned if a certain amount of money was laid out in a certain location at a certain time…

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But despite her idealism—her sincere desire to help her community–young Allison Zheng already imagines some difficulties. Later on in the essay, Allison imagines a conflict—a drawback to her proposed, alternative career path—that makes the essay take a darker turn:

 

If I had two partners, one American and Asian, when they argue, I’d be

caught in the middle. One partner would think that I am too Chinese.

The other would think that I’m too American.

 

I’ve only got one word:  wow.  Wow, because Allison can write so well at such a tender age.  Wow, because she has so much bravery in tackling a nonconformist career path.  Wow, because she already understands something very cruel and terrible and ugly: the difficulties of being an Asian American in the work force are already part of her imaginative geography—that world of anxiety, of shadows, of doorways at thresholds.

Her imagining points to the fact that the stark realities of being an adult—and Asian–in the American workplace also has a parallel–an ugly double–among children on the playground.  Asian Americans experience a host of troubles in the work force that we hardly ever complain about:  glass ceilings; feelings of being accepted but not-quite-fitting-in; always being the foreigner; loyalty issues; disloyalty issues; tokenism; bullying; harassment.

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This anxiety—the act of empathy that allows Allison Zheng to write so powerfully and heartbreakingly about the detective life–is what attracts me to writing about a Vietnamese American sleuth.  I want to be able to achieve that deepness.  I want people to understand the peculiar difficulties of an experience whose embodiment can be…taxing.  And this is why it is so important for Asian Americans—and Vietnamese Americans—to have our own fictional representations.  Thank you Allison Zheng, for showing me why I’m sitting around writing, cut off from the rest of the world:  when I write a book like this, I am thinking of our next generation; I hope that a young girl like Allison Zheng—precocious and brave and driven–will download it and read it and love it!

 

 

 

 

2 thoughts on “Allison Zheng: Asian American Detective

  1. Khanh – I think one od the advantages young writers have is taht they aren’t bothered by the conventions of writing. They write ‘in the moment’ and with both passion and focus. It’s only later that so many of them learn to be afraid to write…

    • Yes, Margot, it’s the self-consciousness that is the death of many a budding young writer…and I guess that is why there is the belief that, in order to write, we not only need a room of one’s own…but also a lock in the door.

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