How Jeremy Lin Breaks the 'Hard-Working Asian American' Narrative
Newly anointed Knicks superstar Jeremy Lin has come to represent many things to many people: Basketball savior to Spike Lee, rival to Kobe Bryant, "humble Harvard hero" to the media. In a post on Capital New York, Edmund Lee sees in Lin a role model—and foil— for young, educated Asian-Americans. According to Lee, the "hard-working Asian-American narrative" is stretched with regard to Lin, who has achieved something very few people, regardless of drive and dedication, can ever master:
Yes, Lin has worked hard, but there’s much more that can’t be explained by hours clocked.
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The thing is, the N.B.A. isn’t a club people get into because of mere hard work, or elite grooming, or cleverness. That's part of the sport's magic, at the professional level. None of the rest of you can do this. And that's a good thing.
Basketball has its elite. They tend to come from a certain place, though, and go through a certain hard-knocks training, as the stereotype goes, and they don’t typically go through the Ivy League or hail from Taiwan. That is the rub here. Lin is not supposed to exist.
Read Edmund Lee piece at Capital New York here.
