a brown man, an indian american man in america. and as his sister, it unearthed all of these feelings and issues that we had never really talked about, that i had no idea he was struggling with. >> on one hand, you can be told that you are exceptional and part of being told that your exceptional means you don't have normal challenges and that you don't need help. >> exactly. exactly. that is model minority myth. it's this idea that asian americans are pegged as the good immigrants, and there comes with that all of these sort of signifiers. these six elections of acts -- because there are many problems with this stereotype. one of them is that it hits communities of color against each other. but the other is, there's a tremendous psychological impact. and that's really what i wanted to explore in the book, and that's what i begin to explore in this essay. is that when we raise people to believe that they can only be exceptional, or this image,