What exactly is a “good immigrant”? Where did we get the idea of “bad Asians”? With literature as our main object of study, this course will focus on the history and persistence of model minority myths in the US popular imagination. We will discuss the 19th-century precursors to this notion in seemingly antithetical “yellow peril” immigration discourse. Moving into the 20th century, we will see how the positive stereotype of a model citizen and worker requires the erasing of distinctions within “Asian American” and gives rise to harmful ideas about Black and Latinx Americans. We will follow these threads as they morph across periods of exclusion, internment, and global economic power. The later part of our semester will focus on literature and culture in the wake of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which ended national origins quotas and, through its tiered system for “skilled” immigrants, profoundly reshaped public discourse on what it meant to be a racial exemplar. Readings may include Hisaye Yamamoto’s short stories, John Okada’s No-No Boy, Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker, Brian Ascalon Roley’s American Son, Elaine Castillo’s America is Not the Heart, Weike Wang’s Chemistry, Adrian Tomine’s Shortcomings, and short fiction by Vanessa Hua, Tony Tulathimutte, and Jenny Bhatt. We will also look at the film Gran Torino and episodes of the TV show Ramy.