Table Of ContentPedagogies of Woundedness
In the series Dis/color, edited by Cynthia Wu,
Julie Avril Minich, and Nirmala Erevelles
ALSO IN THIS SERIES:
Milo Obourn, Disabled Futures: A Framework
for Radical Inclusion
James Kyung-Jin Lee
Pedagogies of Woundedness
Illness, Memoir, and the Ends
of the Model Minority
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Philadelphia • Rome • Tokyo
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122
tupress.temple.edu
Copyright © 2022 by Temple University—Of The Commonwealth System
of Higher Education
All rights reserved
Published 2022
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lee, James Kyung-Jin, author.
Title: Pedagogies of woundedness : illness, memoir, and the ends of the
model minority / James Kyung-Jin Lee.
Description: Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 2022. | Series:
Dis/color | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary:
“Pedagogies of Woundedness wonders what happens when illness betrays
fantasies of indefinite progress to those entrusted to live out this
role framed by success: Asian Americans”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021022985 (print) | LCCN 2021022986 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781439921852 (cloth) | ISBN 9781439921869 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781439921876 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Asian Americans—Health and hygiene—Social aspects. |
Asian Americans—Medical care—Social aspects. | Model minority
stereotype—Health aspects. | Health and race—United States.
Classification: LCC RA448.5.A83 L44 2022 (print) | LCC RA448.5.A83
(ebook) | DDC 362.1089/95073—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021022985
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021022986
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992
Printed in the United States of America
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Sickness unto Death: An Asian American Learning 1
1 The Desification of the Doctor and the Ends of Medicine 27
2 The Doctor, Undone: The Rise of Physician Chaplaincy 61
3 Styles of Asian American Illness 93
4 Illness as Method 127
Epilogue: Slow Time and Unprecedence 161
Notes 173
Bibliography 197
Index 205
Acknowledgments
In the spring of 2009, my friend Michael emailed me to let me know that he
was planning to complete his Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) unit (the
chaplaincy internship you’ll read about in the Introduction) and wondered
whether I’d planned to as well. I sighed. He and I had just completed a year
of seminary coursework as part of our path to ordination in the Episcopal
Church while we continued to hold full-time jobs. I had already let my col-
leagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), know that
I was moving later that summer, so the thought of traveling every day to
downtown Los Angeles to enter the hospital rooms of strangers left me pre-
emptively exhausted. “It would be great if you could,” Michael suggested in
the last of our exchanges. Six weeks later, I joined Michael and four others—
Mary Marjorie Bethea, David Erickson, Heather Erickson, and Norman
Whitmire—in the “Cave,” the conference room where, over the course of ten
weeks during the summer of 2009, we listened to and held up each other as
we muddled our way through stories of heartbreak, messiness, and, at times,
joy. It was this experience of CPE, under the patient and wise direction of
the Rev. Dr. Ronald David, that taught me to let stories breathe differently.
This book might very well not exist if Michael hadn’t nudged me. So thank
you to the Rev. Michael Bell, who succeeded Ron at Good Sam Hospital as
its chaplain, and to the others in my CPE unit.
I also give thanks to the two faith communities that have sustained me
in my work as a priest: the people of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Ventura,
California, who sponsored my candidacy and the people of the Episcopal
viii | ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Church of the Messiah in Santa Ana, California, whom I’ve had the honor
of serving since 2012. I extend special gratitude to the Revs. Norma Guerra,
Jerome Kahler, and Abel López; to the Rt. Revs. Diane Jardine Bruce, J. Jon
Bruno, and John Taylor; and to Dr. David Sheridan. To my seminary col-
leagues and fellow priests in the Diocese of Los Angeles and beyond, I am
grateful for this community of learning and faith: the Revs. Karri Backer,
George Daisa, Greg Foraker, Nancy Frausto, Nicole Janelle, Bill Knutson,
Julie Morris, and Anna Olson.
I joined the Department of Asian American Studies at the University
of California, Irvine (UCI), after my CPE unit and count myself lucky to
enjoy the company of colleagues and friends who are as generous as they are
trenchant: Elaine Andres, Erica Cheung, Jennifer Choy, Robert Escalante,
Dorothy Fujita-Rony, Laureen Hom, Claire Jean Kim, Julia Lee, Caroline
McGuire, Annamarie Newton, Kasey Ning, Isa Quintana, Jasmine Robledo,
Liz Clark Rubio, Ray San Diego, Beheroze Shroff, Linda Vo, and Judy Wu.
Christine Balance moved away, but I cherished the many spontaneous con-
versations with my next-door officemate. Miss you, colleague! The wider
constellation of colleagues at UCI has also nourished: Jonathan Alexander,
Sharon Block, Philip Broadbent, Amy Chen, Youngmin Choe, Adrianne de
Castro, Eleana Kim, Laura Kang, Rodrigo Lazo, Sei Lee, Stephen Lee, Julia
Lupton, Glen Mimura, Sylvia Nam, Catherine Sameh, Jeanne Scheper, Jim
Steintrager, Amanda Swain, and Tiffany Willoughby-Herard. I thank the
Center for Medical Humanities staff for making concrete this important
work at UCI—Sam Carter, JoAnn Jamora, and Makanani Salā—and the
center’s Executive Committee for its wise leadership: Adria Imada, Ketu Ka-
trak, Jenny Terry, David Trend, and Drs. Tan Nguyen and Johanna Shapiro.
I want to acknowledge and honor the center’s founding director Douglas
Haynes, who helped spearhead bringing medical humanities to UCI and
for his continued support of this important endeavor. I thank Sarah Orem
for her work in the Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar at UCI during the
2019–2020 academic year and for her fierce scholarship.
Chris Fan and Jerry Lee are also my UCI colleagues, but they are part of
a special group of people who have been attending conferences hosted by the
American Studies Association of Korea. These meetings have become indis-
pensable for the critical exchange of ideas, meals, and noraebang. Other fellow
travelers include Daniel Kim, Eun Joo Kim, Jinah Kim, Robert Ku, Heijin
Lee, Anita Mannur, Kimberly McKee, and David Roh. I have also cherished
the intellectual comradeship of colleagues in Korea, including Peggy Cho,
the Very Rev. Nak-hyun Joseph Joo, Chang Hee Kim, the Rev. Ho-kwan
Crispin Kim, Min-Jung Kim, Naomi Kim, Eunha Na, and Jae Roh. Special
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | ix
thanks to Kyung-Sook Boo for inviting me to give a talk at Sogang University
based on an early draft of a chapter and to Hyungji Park for the many meals
and conversations that were as sustaining as they were delicious. And to the
flâneur extraordinaire of Seoul, Joe Jeon: here’s to many more evenings of soju
and dried squid while sitting on plastic chairs at 을지로 3가.
The Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) represents the closest
an academic organization can get to a spiritual home, and the reason it is for
me and for so many others is that the AAAS, imperfectly, works to live into the
intellectual imagination of a rigorous and shared—and sometimes contested—
vision of social justice. Many I’ve already named are part of this association;
here are a few more: Aimee Bahng, Crystal Baik, Leslie Bow, Jason Oliver
Chang, Wendy Cheng, Floyd Cheung, Catherine Ceniza Choy, Lawrence-
Minh Bùi Davis, Jigna Desai, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Lan Duong, Cat Fung,
Theo Gonzalves, Jennifer Ho, Tammy Ho, Caroline Hong, Madeline Hsu,
Betsy Huang, Jang Wook Huh, Jane Iwamura, Helen Jun, Miliann Kang,
Grace Kim, Heidi Kim, Nadia Kim, Sue Kim, C. N. Le, Jeehyun Lim, Joo
Ok Kim, Lili Kim, Daryl Maeda, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Crystal Parikh, Chris
Perreira, Cathy Schlund-Vials, Sarita See, Nitasha Sharma, Min Hyoung Song,
Oliver Wang, Ellen Wu, Karen Tei Yamashita, and Timothy Yu. I am deeply
grateful to Patrick Anderson, Mel Chen, Lochlann Jain, Christine Lee, Lana
Lin, Dr. Sunita Puri, and Brandy Worrall for engaging in person with me about
their books. I hope that I was able to do justice to your work in mine.
Portions of this book were delivered at Boston College, Minzu University
of China (Beijing), the Beijing Foreign Studies University, Sogang University,
and UCSB. I thank my former colleagues in the Department of Asian Ameri-
can Studies for inviting me to do so: Diane Fujino, John Park, Lisa Park, and
Xiaojian Zhao. (There is one more person in this department, but I’ll save her
for later.) I also was given the opportunity to present a portion of Chapter 2
as a keynote address at the Polish Association of American Studies (PAAS)
in Warsaw in 2015 and, thanks to funding from the U.S. Embassy, presented
papers at the University of Gdańsk, the Jagiellonian University, and the Uni-
versity of Warsaw during this extended trip. My thanks to Tomasz Basiuk,
then the president of PAAS, for showing me such hospitality, and to Aneta
Dybska, Dominika Ferens, and Zuza Ladya for their enduring friendship.
The group of graduate students who used to gather at our apartment
to watch The X-Files in the 1990s has become a diaspora but continues to
sustain me, despite the geographic distance: Anna Alves, Kelly Jeong, Mike
Murashige, Minh Nguyen, Laura Pulido, Darlene Rodrigues, and Eric Wat.
Same goes for the people at the University of California, Los Angeles, many
of whom I have known longer as digital presences than analog but whose
