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The social awakening often kindles a cultural one. Once in the return part of the curve, many Asian Americans go from downplaying their differences to highlighting them. In fourth grade, Akira Heshiki, who grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, dropped out of the Japanese-language school she attended each Saturday because she didn't feel Japanese. Instead she treasured the moments when her high school classmates told her, "I always forget you're Japanese." But once at Oregon's Reed College, where more than 10% of the students were Asian American, she began to embrace her heritage. She started the Asian student union with two classmates. Its members discussed what it meant to be Asian American, organized anti-sweatshop protests and supplied books on diversity issues, which they felt were lacking from Reed's library. Heshiki even dropped the English name her parents had given her—May—in favor of her middle name, which is Japanese for bright. "I started using it because I wanted people meeting me to have to—for one minute—struggle or acknowledge I was a little different," says Heshiki, 31, now a lawyer in Portland, Ore.
Grayce Liu's cultural renaissance began when she read Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, a novel that parses the complex relationships of Chinese mothers and daughters. Growing up in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., Liu dated only white boys. She hated speaking Mandarin, the language her parents used at home. She added a y to her name and changed the pronunciation to Gray-cee to distinguish herself from two other Asians at school named Grace. "I didn't want to be like other Asians," she recalls. But The Joy Luck Club turned her into a "born-again Asian." It gave her new insights into why her mom was so hard on her and why the ways she showed love—say,through food—were different from those of the families Liu saw on TV, who seemed to say "I love you" all day long. Liu even signed up for Mandarin and Chinese-history courses at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Today she is an actor and producer, and her latest project is a kids' TV show called Bakaboo. Its goal: to teach Mandarin to American-born Chinese.
Seeing their children embrace their heritage is gratifying for the parents who withstood years of youthful rebellion and implied shame. "I was very moved by Grace's efforts," says Grayce Liu's mother Sue, who still calls her daughter by her given name. "She was finally appreciative of all the things I tried to do for her." The hardship these parents and kids have in reaching that kind of understanding reflects more than just the usual generational divide. There is also a cultural crevasse larger than that faced by immigrants' kids whose families at least share a Western civilization that makes American customs a little less alien. Sam Chang's Korean parents were horrified when he got involved in student government at his high school in Phoenix, Ariz. They viewed his extracurricular activities as frivolous diversions from the main goal of his getting into a top college. "When I came home freshman year as president, they had no idea what that meant," says Chang, now 26 and a law student at the University of Arizona. It took congratulations from other parents for them to appreciate their son's coronation as homecoming king his senior year. "They just wanted me to finish school and go to Harvard," Chang says.