Mitsuye Yamada in her writing talk about how she realized that she was considered an Asian American in society and in her family. She feels invisible as an Asian American woman in society and as well as in her family. In society people think that Asian people were not oppressed, and this is the stereotype that many people have, maybe it is because we were the left off-ethic, a quote from Yamada’s writing is “it made me angry. Their anger made me angry because I didn’t even know the Asian Americans felt oppressed. I didn’t expect their anger” (page 35). This is a true reaction when comes to this problem, as Yamada said we were the invisible race, she continues to writes ”The seemingly apolitical middle-class woman and the apolitical Asian woman constituted double invisibility“ (page 37). I feel like this sentence remains me of black feminists, they are also facing double invisibility, where they were excluded out of the advantage that their race and gender have.
In addition, she writes that in her family, when her parents know that she has a boyfriend, her parents were afraid that she would marry a pacifist, and they were not worried that she could be a pacifist because even she is, she could not many any different to anybody, “but my father reassured me that it was “all right” for me to be a pacifist because as a Japanese national and a “girl” it didn’t make any difference to anyone” (page 38). Asian women were always considered as submissive, subservient, ready-to-please, easy-to-get-along-with, and this is why her parents were not worried about her being a pacifist. In other words, Asian women were not only invisible in the society, but also in their own household.