Why Asian Boss Ladies?
I grew up in a large Chinese-American family in San Francisco without realizing that Asian people were considered a minority in America. Living a sheltered life, I never questioned either being Chinese or American. I was raised by my parents to believe I could do whatever I wanted, which led me to applying and leaving for boarding school at the age of 14. Living in an affluent and predominantly white school was the first time I became aware of being The Other. It was also the first time that I truly saw inequity for the very first time in a real way. Rich kids got a slap on the wrist for breaking the rules: scholarship kids got thrown out. Rich kids got personal phone calls to college admissions offices made for them: scholarship kids got to wait in line to see the college counselor who offered little to no advice.
Fast forward to being an adult. I had chosen a career as an Executive Director helping low-income kids access better educational opportunities—including attending my alma mater. At the same time, my mother was diagnosed with a chronic disease. My mother had worked for over 20 years at a corporate job that she hated in order to keep us in the middle class: new clothes, a vacation every couple of years and tuition at my fancy schools. I had no doubt that her disease was brought on in part from the stress of going to the job she hated for years. She didn’t receive promotions she wanted or get raises she deserved because she didn’t know that rich kids hook each other up and leave the scholarship kid out. She didn’t know that rising the ranks was about who you know, not what you know. So, like a good Asian, she just worked harder and ground herself down because nobody had told her how to play the game.
I also thought about my grandmothers, both of whom had immigrated from China. One of them had worked as a seamstress for decades in a sweatshop. The other had run bodegas in the most dangerous parts of San Francisco and kept a bat behind the counter in the case of hold-ups. Of all of the experiences of what it meant to be an Asian woman, there were plenty of examples of duty, obligation, grit, but none of joy and fulfillment.
When my mother became ill, I started to ask myself whether or not I wanted to be like her. Did I want to work at a job that stressed me out, to be able to save up to go on vacations to experience joy two weeks out of every year and to end up sick at 60 because of doing everything for everyone else? Nope.
When I decided to leave my job as an Executive Director it was because I realized that I did not want to live a life of obligation, of taking care of others at expense to myself, of quietly toiling to make other people’s dreams a reality. I realized that while Asian American women seem like they have it all figured out, the story behind the story is that we are the mercy of an unfair system and that we have learned not to ask for more or expect more. We eat shit quietly and ask for second helpings instead of putting down the chopsticks and walking away.
The elephant in the room is that I believe that many Asian American women—though they seem to “have it all”—are quietly suffering from living a life that is not their own. They are living in an unfair system and believe that in order to survive, they must continue to toil away and be the “good Asian.” We are the ones cleaning up behind the scenes, literally and figuratively, but no expectation of recognition or of leading. We are invisible, living lives of quiet desperation, sentenced to suffer in silence, and upholding a system of white supremacy and privilege.
I started a group with my friend Stephanie Lai called Asian Boss Ladies, which brought together Asian American professional women for monthly dinners. Over time, our mailing list grew and other Asian women wanted to join.
Now, I am on a mission to build a million Asian woman army, one dinner at a time. We want to create a community of Asian women who can be the bosses of their own lives and be joined by their sisters. We want to take up space, make noise, feel joy and invite everyone to the table. This is Asian Boss Ladies.