When I have an author on the podcast, I read their book. The author Jay Caspian Kang is coming on this Monday, so I spent the last few days reading his book “The Loneliest Americans.”

It turns out I have a great deal in common with the author – son of immigrants, grew up in a predominantly white area, went to elite schools including Columbia for graduate school, lived in New York City, and both operate in a public context (he as a journalist, me as whatever I am).

Jay’s book is about the formation of Asian American identity among other things. Jay at least partially dismisses the term ‘Asian American’ as an academic construct that includes many people – including his parents and relatives – who don’t think of themselves in those terms. They’re more likely to think of themselves as “Koreans in America.” His description of the formation of Asian American identity is this:

“We know we don’t have it as bad as you, but we also aren’t white and we need a way to talk about it.” The ‘you’ in this sentence is black people.

Jay makes the argument that race in America is a binary white/black construction, and Asians have struggled with this by either adopting the attitudes of white liberals or professing alignment with blacks/people of color, while not being truly accepted by either. Hence the loneliness in the title.

Jay traces the Immigration Act of 1965 that led to his parents – and mine – being able to come to the U.S. as well as the genesis of several communities, including Koreatown in Los Angeles, the pan-Asian community of Flushing, and much later the Asian men’s groups on Reddit. He also details his work as a journalist for Vice covering protests against police brutality around the country.

One of the most incisive passages in the book concerned the press’s treatment of the recent Covid-era violence against Asian elderly people as contrary to the preferred racial narratives. Say Kang about the phenomenon: “White liberals talk about ending racism, but they don’t mean us. In fact, they will actually deny us justice to protect Black assailants . . . for the upwardly mobile second generation, these quiet thoughts metastasize, not quite into a reactionary politics but into an abiding resentment that makes you question your place within the multicultural, liberal elite.”

To the extent that Jay has a recommendation, it is for educated, upwardly mobile Asian Americans to make common cause with the millions of working-class immigrants who are often invisible and neglected in these conversations rather than to agitate for equal treatment in the media and the like.

I enjoyed Jay’s book immensely. It was brutally honest and told stories that I hadn’t before seen in print.

I speak to Asian American groups fairly often. And the message I give them is that we or our parents came to this country to have a better life for us or our children. And for many of us, it has worked. That’s been the formula. For some, the natural thing is to ask for more, for better treatment.

But now, the country needs us. It is not doing well. It is being torn apart by polarization and division. A disintegrating America will be bad for everyone, in every community.

When I was running for mayor, I made the point that half of the documented anti-Asian violence in New York was committed by mentally ill people, and that getting people better services should be the main priority. Disintegration will hurt us all.

Instead of hewing to one of the extremes, we can be the group in the middle. We can be the glue that helps keep the country together.

We have a lot to offer. Our country needs us to step up, contribute and lead in ways that we have not done so before.

What should the purpose of the Asian American community be? In my mind, it should be the betterment of America itself. The whole country. Everyone within it. Get it working again.

It’s a lofty, selfless goal. Some might regard it as impossible. But I have the feeling that we’d be a lot less lonely in that world – we’d probably make a lot of new friends. I certainly have.

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The Forward Tour is coming to New York City this Saturday at City Winery – it’s going to be a great event ([link removed]) ! I’ll take photographs and meet everyone and sign books. Looking forward to seeing you there or tell your friends!

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