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"The post-1965 generation really is different," says David Reimers, a historian of immigration at N.Y.U. "The process of assimilation has been much faster." The inspiration for the notion of the "model minority," the generation's members have been most recognized for their high academic achievements, a reflection of their parents' drive for a certain kind of success. But that is only part of their story. Shuttling between two worlds—and seeming to fit into neither—many felt as if "they had no community," says Chang-rae Lee, a Korean-American novelist who has written about this generation's journey. "They had to create themselves." In doing so, they have updated the old immigrant story and forged a new Asian-American identity, not wholly recognizable in any of their parents' native lands but, in its hybrid nature, vibrantly American.
If you were to draw a diagram of acculturation, with the mores of immigrant parents on one side and society's on the other, the classic model might show a steady drift over time, depicting a slow-burn Americanization, taking as long as two or three generations. The more recent Asian-American curve, however, looks almost like the path of a boomerang: early isolation, rapid immersion and assimilation and then a re-appreciation of ethnic roots.
As a child growing up in Pennington, N.J., Fareha Ahmed watched Bollywood videos and enthusiastically attended the annual Pakistan Independence Day Parade in New York City. By middle school, though, her parents' Pakistani culture had become uncool. "I wanted to fit in so bad," Ahmed says. For her, that meant trying to be white. She dyed her hair blond, got hazel contact lenses and complained, "I'm going to smell," when her mom served fragrant dishes like lamb biryani for dinner. But at Villanova University in Philadelphia, Ahmed found friends from all different backgrounds who welcomed diversity and helped her, she says, become "a good balance of East meets West." Now 23, she and her non-Asian roommates threw a party to mark the Islamic holiday 'Id al-Fitr in November, then threw another for Christmas—which her family never celebrated. "I chose to embrace both holidays instead of segregating myself to one," she says.
Asian Americans say part of the reason it is so hard to reach an equilibrium is that they are seen as what sociologists call "forever foreigners." Their looks lead to a lifetime of questions like "No, where are you really from?" As a teenager in the affluent and overwhelmingly white Chicago suburb of Riverwoods, Ill, Vanessa DeGuia, now 26, endured incident after incident that made her aware that others regarded her as foreign, despite how her birth certificate read. One classmate told her, "You're my brown friend. You're so exotic." Another came over for dinner, took a bite of a Filipino egg roll made by Vanessa's mom, spat it out and asked if it was made of dog. "I never felt like I belonged," DeGuia says. "Though I was born in this country and English was my first language, I was always seen as a foreigner."