Right from the beginning of Chapter 3, Ozeki starts out the chapter by describing her Japanese coworkers with similar imagery to that of Asian stereotypes. She describes Suzuki as having
mere slits, as though someone had taken a razor blade and drawn bloodless incisions into the swollen skin. You could never tell if they were open or shut, or it he was watching you. 'He has a great eye,' I liked to say to Americans and watch them glance dubiously at him and wonder, Where? (Ozeki 33)
Thoughts:
Although I have to say that most Asian Americans do have the round-face and small-eyes stereotype, the last sentence of this quote really made me upset. The fact that others describe his small-eyes as something you cannot tell whether or not they were open or shut implies the fact that you cannot see what Asian Americans are doing, and thus they are sneaky. Ozeki goes further by sarcastically emphasizing the fact that Asian eyes are so small that you cannot even tell that they have eyes. Although this is not a major issue compared to other major problems, these stereotypes essentially dehumanizes Asian Americans. The jokes about Asian eyes basically categorizes Asian Americans as less than human because we do not have the same features as most people.
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