- In Lisa Park’s essay, A Letter To My Sister, Parks describes the detrimental effects of the American society (particularly with white people) on the lives of Asian Americans. She emphasizes the harmful stereotypes of the appearance of Asians, particularly on the face. She argues that the suicide of her sister was caused by the rampant stereotypes that perpetuate throughout American societies through school, beauty, and the workplace.
- Parks begins her essay describing her sisters struggle to reconstruct her face to conform to the “Euromerican ideal” stating “but plastic surgery is irreversible, and so were the twenty-one years of assimilation” (65). Parks argues that due to the standards of beauty present in American society, her sisters desperate attempt to assimilate just brought debt to her parents and an obsession to changing her looks, describing it as “a mistake of a body” (66). Later on, in the essay, Parks describes situations where she and her family were both mentally and physically stereotyped. In one instance, Parks brings up the situation where her sister “got arrested for stealing a car in order to escape the nearly all-white university you were attending” (67). This implied that both universities lacked diversities among Asians and that because of this situation, Parks sister felt isolated and secluded because of her race. Parks even states that “we became pathetic victims of whiteness” (68). From beauty standards to even school, there was an inescapable denial of Asian Americans place in society.
- A key term that was referenced in the essay was the term “exotic” evident by her quote, “I remember when our mother once criticized you for cutting off your long, straight, black hair (in your effort to appear less ‘exotic’)” (69). By definition, the term “exotic” can mean attractive or striking because colorful or out of the ordinary or it can also mean originating in or characteristics of a distant foreign country. It is mainly used to refer to plants or animals but for Asians, it references the striking and bold characteristics that define beauty, such as, in Parks instance, her sisters long, straight, black hair. Although “exotic” can imply beauty and a sense of allurement, it is often used to hypersexualize Asian women, categorizing them as nothing more than just foreign in media.
- Throughout her essay, Parks brings awareness to the treatment of Asian Americans in Americans societies but also does not falter to the treatment and response to suicide itself. According to the nation’s largest private funder of suicide research, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), they reported on the Center for Diseases Controls (CDC) data published on December 21, 2017 regarding the suicide rate for the year 2016 and it stated that suicide is still the tenth leading cause of death with more than half of suicide deaths caused by firearms (51 percent), which in this case, also applies to Parks sisters method of suicide. For mental health, Parks even references the subject of the stigma that is apparent with suicide, stating “labels of ‘mental illness’ and ‘madness’ are ways of silencing difference and shifting blame from the social to the individual” (67). Parks argues that although mental health illness comes from ones own personal issues, those issues are derived from the way that society has treated the individual. In psychology, the term fundamental attribution error refers to the assumption that others act predominately on the basis of their dispositions, even when there is evidence suggesting the importance of their situations. This means that we are quick to perceive the actions of others based on their own dispositional, or internal, situations rather than reflect on the bigger issue of their situational attributions and this applies to how Parks refers to the shifting of blame from the societal issues that tend to be ignored or amplified to a harmful degree to one’s own individual issues or concerns. Regarding the cultural link to suicide and Asians in the media, Parks narrative on the suicide of her sister in the form of an essay allows readers to understand the struggles of Asian Americans conforming and living in an American society as well as how the harmful impact stereotypes can have on the lives of those affected by them.
Source: https://afsp.org/suicide-rate-1-8-percent-according-recent-cdc-data-year-2016/