By Justine Trinh
In my first forays into Asian American studies, I took a class called “Bad Asians” that focused on Asian Americans and the media. At the time, it did not occur to me that Asian/Americans could be “bad” because I was so used to the model minority stereotype. As a child, I was told Asians (and by extension me) had to be “good” in order to succeed, and I was so inundated with success stories that it was unfathomable that Asians could be anything else other than doctors, lawyers, engineers, and so forth. I knew “bad” Asians existed, but they were never talked about; when they were talked about, they were used as cautionary tales (“Don’t be like your cousin who dropped out of school. He has nothing ahead of him”). However, this class provided an alternative narrative: that not all Asian Americans achieve traditional success, and not all Asian Americans are good, law-abiding citizens.
Kirstin Chen plays with the idea of the model minority and appearances in her latest novel, Counterfeit. Ava Wong is the poster child of success. She is a Chinese American lawyer married to a successful surgeon, owns a beautiful house, and has a toddler son. She worked hard to get the life she has, yet underneath the façade, her life is not perfect. Ava has not worked since her son was born; her son throws non-stop tantrums that push her to her limits; her marriage is crumbling as her husband’s job requires him to be away from the familial home and their screaming child. This all changes when Ava’s college roommate, Winnie Fang, re-enters her life looking to reconnect. Winnie is no longer the shy, awkward girl that Ava remembers, but now heads a counterfeit scheme where she imports near-exact replicas of luxury handbags. Ava gets involved, but once things go south, Winnie disappears, leaving Ava to deal with the consequences.
I absolutely loved the narrative framing of the novel. When I first opened the book, I saw the first person “I” and assumed the book would be told with Ava as the storyteller to an audience (the readers) that have no bearing to the overall story. However, once she started addressing her audience as “detective,” Ava is no longer telling the story to us, the audience, but rather the detective. Suddenly, the purpose of the narrative has changed because it is now either a confession or interrogation, and I wanted to know what Ava did and how she was caught. Chen does this switch in perspective so seamlessly that I forgot that a confession is also a performance. Sociologist Erving Goffman argued that self is created through social interaction and that we perform ourselves. Through this confession, Ava is creating and performing a version of herself that she wants the detective to believe she is.
Counterfeit also shows the importance of appearances. Winnie can pass as perfect with her immaculate sense of style and her coveted Birkin bag, but like the counterfeit purses she imports, she can never be the real thing no matter how hard she tries. Yet at the same time, this ability to pass is the reason for her success in her illicit purse pursuit. She can “return” the expensive Celine bag to Neiman Marcus without anyone realizing the purse she is returning is fake. The shop attendant has no reason to doubt Winnie because she presents herself as a crazy rich Asian who can afford many expensive purses.
Similarly, Ava has been the model minority her whole life. If the model minority was a brand like Apple or Hermes, then it has a reputation of producing model citizens. erin Khuê Ninh argues, “To be presumed smart, hard-working, rule-abiding good kids are tremendous benefits of the doubt” as no one expects the model minority to step out of line. Thus, it becomes unfathomable for someone like Ava to participate in an illegal counterfeit purse business even though she is helping Winnie pass these purses as genuine articles. The cops do not get involved or question her until Winnie and Ava get caught because she performs the model minority to a T.
I had bought this book a couple of years ago at a used library bookstore, and it has sat on my bookshelf ever since. I honestly wish I had read it sooner because I was instantly hooked. I needed to know what were the events that led up to Ava sitting across from the detective, confessing her misdeeds. Counterfeit felt like a combination of the films Better Luck Tomorrow and Crazy Rich Asians, as it subverted the model minority myth. During a showing of Better Luck Tomorrow in 2002, an audience member accused the filmmakers of misrepresenting Asian American culture and race because the movie showed Asian Americans doing bad things and being immoral. The characters in that movie use the model minority myth to get away with stealing computer parts in the same way Ava and Winnie use their Asian identity to pass fake purses as real ones. Within that twenty-year span between Better Luck Tomorrow and Counterfeit, narratives of the model minority continue to dominate mass media which make these works necessary. These works show that Asian Americans are not the model minority or perfect. To expect this of Asian Americans is like expecting a fake Celine handbag to be the real thing.
Justine Trinh is an English literature Ph.D. student at Washington State University. She graduated from the University of California, Irvine with B.A.s in Asian American studies and classical civilizations and a B.S. in mathematics. She then went on to earn her M.A. in Asian American studies, making her the first student to graduate from UCI Asian American Studies’ 4+1 B.A./M.A. program. Her research interests include Asian American literature, critical refugee studies, family and trauma, and forced departure and disownment.