I have a relatively artistic Chinese American family (dad and uncle are retired graphic designers/illustrators; mom makes jewelry and greeting cards for fun; sister was a dancer and saxophone player in high school/college; cousin is in a punk band) so until I was like... in high school I didn't realize this was actually a thing. I think part of it is because none of my family immigrated here any later than the '50s (half came before 1900), so they missed the memo.
Ooh yeah, your family members are from an entirely different generation from mine. Mine came to the US in the â80s, and I went to a school that was 70% Asian and where almost all of them also had parents who were recent immigrants (or were immigrants themselves). Our entire school had running jokes about how there were only three jobs allowed to us: doctor, lawyer, or engineer. (Wait, I take it back, thereâs a fourth possibility: accountant.)
I will say that to my parentsâ credit, they did couch my potential job pickings in terms of what would give me the most secure future, rather than âwe want you to do this to bring honor to the family and also to show up the cousins we meet every Christmas and secretly hateâ. Acting, singing, theater, as they said, are not jobs that give you a guaranteed income. They would also point out how few Asian-Americans there were in American movies and television shows at the time, which is its own topic (representation and all)...
It is all rather funny, as my parents had their artistic sides as well: my mom wanted to be a journalist at first, so clearly she was quite good at writing, and my dad was very artistic and pretty much passed his love of musicals and ballet down to me. But to use those as actual jobs? Get out! Those are hobbies you can indulge in, not careers! It probably says something that my own cousin, who did go into graphic design, was still forced to spend her first year in college as a biology major before she could convince her parents to switch.
