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Stuck: Why Asian Americans Don't Reach the Top of the Corporate Ladder
Winner, 2021 PROSE Award in the Business, Finance & Management Category
A behind-the-scenes examination of Asian Americans in the workplace
In the classroom, Asian Americans, often singled out as so-called "model minorities," are expected to be top of the class. Often they are, getting straight As and gaining admission to elite colleges and universities. But the corporate world is a different story. As Margaret M. Chin reveals in this important new book, many Asian Americans get stuck on the corporate ladder, never reaching the top.
In Stuck, Chin shows that there is a "bamboo ceiling" in the workplace, describing a corporate world where racial and ethnic inequalities prevent upward mobility. Drawing on interviews with second-generation Asian Americans, she examines why they fail to advance as fast or as high as their colleagues, showing how they lose out on leadership positions, executive roles, and entry to the coveted boardroom suite over the course of their careers. An unfair lack of trust from their coworkers, absence of role models, sponsors and mentors, and for women, sexual harassment and prejudice especially born at the intersection of race and gender are only a few of the factors that hold Asian American professionals back.
Ultimately, Chin sheds light on the experiences of Asian Americans in the workplace, providing insight into and a framework of who is and isn't granted access into the upper echelons of American society, and why.
A behind-the-scenes examination of Asian Americans in the workplace
In the classroom, Asian Americans, often singled out as so-called "model minorities," are expected to be top of the class. Often they are, getting straight As and gaining admission to elite colleges and universities. But the corporate world is a different story. As Margaret M. Chin reveals in this important new book, many Asian Americans get stuck on the corporate ladder, never reaching the top.
In Stuck, Chin shows that there is a "bamboo ceiling" in the workplace, describing a corporate world where racial and ethnic inequalities prevent upward mobility. Drawing on interviews with second-generation Asian Americans, she examines why they fail to advance as fast or as high as their colleagues, showing how they lose out on leadership positions, executive roles, and entry to the coveted boardroom suite over the course of their careers. An unfair lack of trust from their coworkers, absence of role models, sponsors and mentors, and for women, sexual harassment and prejudice especially born at the intersection of race and gender are only a few of the factors that hold Asian American professionals back.
Ultimately, Chin sheds light on the experiences of Asian Americans in the workplace, providing insight into and a framework of who is and isn't granted access into the upper echelons of American society, and why.
- GenresNonfictionBusiness
232 pages, Hardcover
First published August 11, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 27, 2020
As the title goes, Margaret M. Chin's book Stuck: Why Asian Americans Don't Reach the Top of the Corporate Ladder is an analysis on why Asian Americans, despite their academic achievements and success in work, struggle to reach the top of the corporate ladder. It is a struggle that I have heard from fellow Asian friends who have worked hard at their jobs and were still passed by in job promotions in favor of white co-workers with equal and frequently less experience.
I have mixed feelings about this book, because I thought this book would address more of the racism that Asian Americans experience at work that isn't often addressed in discussions on racism. While this book mentions racism throughout, I don't feel like it validated the plights of Asian Americans. Instead, the focus was spent discussing how Asian Americans are seen as hardworking and exhibited technical skills but often don't have the soft skills to become a leader. Examples of success were Asian Americans who were able to successfully adapt and acquire the soft skills required to gain the trust of their white co-workers. Although I don't see anything wrong in pointing this out, because I do feel that this is sometimes the case, this seems to imply and reinforce the idea that if Asians work harder at different skills, they will succeed, the narrative that Chin brings up over and over again in a so called 'playbook' that Asian parents use to teach their children on the ways of success.
While see her point, I think this negates a lot of the discussion on how to address the systematic racism that Asians face at work, and how to work at changing the system. I do have to note that she explains how Affirmative Action has helped Asians in previous decades by providing mentorship and resources for people of color in their work places, which has helped them adapt to the white work environment. Many friends I know who are second generation Asians already exhibit the soft skills required to be good leaders, yet are still passed up for leadership positions at work that I can only attribute to a deeply ingrained belief that Asians are not leaders. So while I feel like this book provides good advice for Asians in developing the right skills for leadership roles, it doesn't do enough to address the systemic racism that Asians face at work. A white person reading this might feel validated thinking that they made the right choice not to hire an Asian leader because they don't yet have the soft skills for it.
I'd recommend this for any Asian who is interested in seeing what they can do better to increase their job prospects. As a Asian American, I personally found this book helpful for skills I could work on to improve myself. I would not recommend this to a white person who is hoping to learn more about systemic racism towards Asians at work.
Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this book.
I have mixed feelings about this book, because I thought this book would address more of the racism that Asian Americans experience at work that isn't often addressed in discussions on racism. While this book mentions racism throughout, I don't feel like it validated the plights of Asian Americans. Instead, the focus was spent discussing how Asian Americans are seen as hardworking and exhibited technical skills but often don't have the soft skills to become a leader. Examples of success were Asian Americans who were able to successfully adapt and acquire the soft skills required to gain the trust of their white co-workers. Although I don't see anything wrong in pointing this out, because I do feel that this is sometimes the case, this seems to imply and reinforce the idea that if Asians work harder at different skills, they will succeed, the narrative that Chin brings up over and over again in a so called 'playbook' that Asian parents use to teach their children on the ways of success.
While see her point, I think this negates a lot of the discussion on how to address the systematic racism that Asians face at work, and how to work at changing the system. I do have to note that she explains how Affirmative Action has helped Asians in previous decades by providing mentorship and resources for people of color in their work places, which has helped them adapt to the white work environment. Many friends I know who are second generation Asians already exhibit the soft skills required to be good leaders, yet are still passed up for leadership positions at work that I can only attribute to a deeply ingrained belief that Asians are not leaders. So while I feel like this book provides good advice for Asians in developing the right skills for leadership roles, it doesn't do enough to address the systemic racism that Asians face at work. A white person reading this might feel validated thinking that they made the right choice not to hire an Asian leader because they don't yet have the soft skills for it.
I'd recommend this for any Asian who is interested in seeing what they can do better to increase their job prospects. As a Asian American, I personally found this book helpful for skills I could work on to improve myself. I would not recommend this to a white person who is hoping to learn more about systemic racism towards Asians at work.
Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this book.
September 4, 2023
Margaret Chin is clearly more concerned with changing the conditions for a tiny proportion of wealthy Ivy League East Asian uber-professionals than she is with changing the opportunities for all people, or even with all asian american people, and this book is an exploration of her concern.
November 5, 2025
Read this for work, didn't love this at all... Want to preface that I am Gen Z though and this book, while written in 2019(?), seems skewed toward capturing the experiences of older generations at a very high level.
There's a noticeable disconnect between the patterns that Chin identifies and the conclusions she draws from them. She does mention several times the so-called “immigrant bargain” and how Asian American parenting often pushes children toward academic/professional success, but she consistently avoids engaging with the cultural and psychological consequences of those dynamics. For example, while she acknowledges that Asian Americans are taught to work hard and keep their heads down, she never really explores how those same teachings contribute to the negative stereotypes we face in the workplace (like being passive or unassertive, or lacking leadership potential). That isn't to say those negative stereotypes are always warranted, and I definitely don't want to detract from the excellent points she made about racism in the workplace, but it would have been nice to spend a lot more time exploring how those stereotypes came about.
In relation to that, she also kind of vaguely mentions immigrant psychology and the origins of the model minority myth, etc, but my experience reading Chin's words was like thirsting to death in the desert, being given a huge jug of crisp cold water, and then being told I could only take a sip of it. In essence - frustratingly surface-level.
In general it felt like Chin skirted around some of these deeper issues, possibly to avoid offending readers. E.g., she briefly links “tiger mom” parenting to Asian women’s struggles with reentering the workforce, saying that they're caught between family expectations and professional ambition (the women are told by their parents to prioritize family while also balancing high standards professionally, or are told to step back from achieving professionally in order to prioritize family). She makes that point but then fails to explore how that same upbringing might influence our personalities or how we show up at work. There’s a whole dimension there about how silence, obedience, and shame get internalized that she doesn’t bother to unpack at all.
Anyway, I feel like Chin tries to focus predominantly on workplace experiences with some disconnected lines about culture interspersed throughout, but our workplace experiences are fundamentally shaped by our upbringing and cultural context. She acknowledges that many Asian Americans are told to be quiet and not cause trouble, but it’s just a passing line. There’s no real discussion of generational trauma, or how feelings of shame and survivalism shape our sense of self and our behavior in professional spaces. She touches on historical moments - like how the model minority myth was created in part to further oppress the Black community - but then moves on without fully exploring those implications. The book just often felt very high-level, jumping from anecdote to anecdote or interview to interview without delving further.
Another example of the above is how she talks about the hypersexualization of Asian American women and how that complicates conversations around sexual harassment in the workplace. It’s a good and important point. But again, she stops short. Earlier in the chapter, she notes that some Asian girls are raised to never speak to boys and then suddenly, as adults, they’re expected to think about marriage. That’s a crucial setup for understanding how some Asian women might struggle to assert themselves in male-dominated environments. Again, that doesn't detract from her other points about the disgusting sexual harassment and fetishization of Asian women, BUT there are other conversations to be had here about the long-term psychological effects of this kind of upbringing that she avoids.
I just wish the book had gone further and been more intersectional - acknowledging that race doesn’t exist in isolation from culture, history, and class. It often felt like Chin wanted to keep the conversation strictly focused on race and workplace discrimination, when in reality, so much of our experience is shaped by the interaction of multiple factors. Not to mention, if she was going to just focus on upper class Asians, she should have made that clearer earlier on in the book. I get that she really wanted to talk about C suite execs, and just by way of opportunity, Asians born into an upper class family tend to make their way there faster if at all, but again - there are so many tenets to the Asian American experience. Plus the Asian American diaspora spans so wide, and class is part of this. Ethnicity does matter here.
Also, maybe this comes from me being part of Gen Z, but Chin’s book just seemed so conscious of not offending older generations of Asian (/Americans), presumably those who believed in the “Asian American playbook" or might have even passed the playbook's guidelines onto their children. She frames the realization that this playbook doesn’t guarantee promotions or leadership roles as a shock. But she doesn’t critique the playbook itself deeply enough. It’s not just that it doesn’t work, it actively limits us. She does touch on this a bit at the very, very end of the book, like the literal fourth to last page or something, but otherwise brings it up as isolated incidences that have nothing to do with our ability to navigate the world, only to do with why we're so shocked when working hard doesn't net the expected results. She even says that many Asians internalize failure rather than recognizing prejudice or acknowledging that failure as systemic, but she never links that back to the playbook. Like why should we recognize systemic failures without recognizing the generational traumas that lead us to internalize our failures in the first place?
Anyway, she does end the book by talking about how we need to “rewrite” the playbook, but even that feels like a buzzword. Tell us what you actually mean... If you think we need to go to therapy for our generational trauma, then why not say that? Some of our cultural norms are very deeply embedded and damaging, and just because they may have been historically embedded by racism in America doesn't mean it shouldn't be addressed in favor of just saying that racism exists. Unfortunately, racism has and will continue to impact culture. Identities cannot exist without intersectionality. So why not be direct about the changes we need to make in our internal communities instead of tiptoeing around the topic, saying things like, "Let's rethink our playbook."
Honestly it even begs the question of audience. You don't need to explore surface level themes to be accessible; that's what clear and concise writing is for. But presumably any Asian American who picks up this book is going to want all facets of their identity addressed here, or at least to the extent that they can all be addressed. Sadly, Chin writes like a politician - clear but with not a whole lot to say, almost purposefully vague at times, with a very deliberate side picked so as to express, "Hey Asians, I'm not here to criticize the way you were raised or talk about how history influences our present cultural norms, I'm just here to fight white power." Odd thing to convey when she is constantly talking about intersectionality.
Again though, I want to re-emphasize that I am Gen Z, and so my opinions are colored by personal bias. Having been fortunate enough to miss the worst of racism (that isn't to say I haven't experienced racism, since I have many times - just acknowledging that it's much more widely discussed, analyzed, and addressed now than it was before), and being born at a time where everyone has begun to focus on healing generational trauma, addressing abuse, and taking care of one's mental health, I skew towards wanting to address internal problems in one's community just as much as external ones.
There's a noticeable disconnect between the patterns that Chin identifies and the conclusions she draws from them. She does mention several times the so-called “immigrant bargain” and how Asian American parenting often pushes children toward academic/professional success, but she consistently avoids engaging with the cultural and psychological consequences of those dynamics. For example, while she acknowledges that Asian Americans are taught to work hard and keep their heads down, she never really explores how those same teachings contribute to the negative stereotypes we face in the workplace (like being passive or unassertive, or lacking leadership potential). That isn't to say those negative stereotypes are always warranted, and I definitely don't want to detract from the excellent points she made about racism in the workplace, but it would have been nice to spend a lot more time exploring how those stereotypes came about.
In relation to that, she also kind of vaguely mentions immigrant psychology and the origins of the model minority myth, etc, but my experience reading Chin's words was like thirsting to death in the desert, being given a huge jug of crisp cold water, and then being told I could only take a sip of it. In essence - frustratingly surface-level.
In general it felt like Chin skirted around some of these deeper issues, possibly to avoid offending readers. E.g., she briefly links “tiger mom” parenting to Asian women’s struggles with reentering the workforce, saying that they're caught between family expectations and professional ambition (the women are told by their parents to prioritize family while also balancing high standards professionally, or are told to step back from achieving professionally in order to prioritize family). She makes that point but then fails to explore how that same upbringing might influence our personalities or how we show up at work. There’s a whole dimension there about how silence, obedience, and shame get internalized that she doesn’t bother to unpack at all.
Anyway, I feel like Chin tries to focus predominantly on workplace experiences with some disconnected lines about culture interspersed throughout, but our workplace experiences are fundamentally shaped by our upbringing and cultural context. She acknowledges that many Asian Americans are told to be quiet and not cause trouble, but it’s just a passing line. There’s no real discussion of generational trauma, or how feelings of shame and survivalism shape our sense of self and our behavior in professional spaces. She touches on historical moments - like how the model minority myth was created in part to further oppress the Black community - but then moves on without fully exploring those implications. The book just often felt very high-level, jumping from anecdote to anecdote or interview to interview without delving further.
Another example of the above is how she talks about the hypersexualization of Asian American women and how that complicates conversations around sexual harassment in the workplace. It’s a good and important point. But again, she stops short. Earlier in the chapter, she notes that some Asian girls are raised to never speak to boys and then suddenly, as adults, they’re expected to think about marriage. That’s a crucial setup for understanding how some Asian women might struggle to assert themselves in male-dominated environments. Again, that doesn't detract from her other points about the disgusting sexual harassment and fetishization of Asian women, BUT there are other conversations to be had here about the long-term psychological effects of this kind of upbringing that she avoids.
I just wish the book had gone further and been more intersectional - acknowledging that race doesn’t exist in isolation from culture, history, and class. It often felt like Chin wanted to keep the conversation strictly focused on race and workplace discrimination, when in reality, so much of our experience is shaped by the interaction of multiple factors. Not to mention, if she was going to just focus on upper class Asians, she should have made that clearer earlier on in the book. I get that she really wanted to talk about C suite execs, and just by way of opportunity, Asians born into an upper class family tend to make their way there faster if at all, but again - there are so many tenets to the Asian American experience. Plus the Asian American diaspora spans so wide, and class is part of this. Ethnicity does matter here.
Also, maybe this comes from me being part of Gen Z, but Chin’s book just seemed so conscious of not offending older generations of Asian (/Americans), presumably those who believed in the “Asian American playbook" or might have even passed the playbook's guidelines onto their children. She frames the realization that this playbook doesn’t guarantee promotions or leadership roles as a shock. But she doesn’t critique the playbook itself deeply enough. It’s not just that it doesn’t work, it actively limits us. She does touch on this a bit at the very, very end of the book, like the literal fourth to last page or something, but otherwise brings it up as isolated incidences that have nothing to do with our ability to navigate the world, only to do with why we're so shocked when working hard doesn't net the expected results. She even says that many Asians internalize failure rather than recognizing prejudice or acknowledging that failure as systemic, but she never links that back to the playbook. Like why should we recognize systemic failures without recognizing the generational traumas that lead us to internalize our failures in the first place?
Anyway, she does end the book by talking about how we need to “rewrite” the playbook, but even that feels like a buzzword. Tell us what you actually mean... If you think we need to go to therapy for our generational trauma, then why not say that? Some of our cultural norms are very deeply embedded and damaging, and just because they may have been historically embedded by racism in America doesn't mean it shouldn't be addressed in favor of just saying that racism exists. Unfortunately, racism has and will continue to impact culture. Identities cannot exist without intersectionality. So why not be direct about the changes we need to make in our internal communities instead of tiptoeing around the topic, saying things like, "Let's rethink our playbook."
Honestly it even begs the question of audience. You don't need to explore surface level themes to be accessible; that's what clear and concise writing is for. But presumably any Asian American who picks up this book is going to want all facets of their identity addressed here, or at least to the extent that they can all be addressed. Sadly, Chin writes like a politician - clear but with not a whole lot to say, almost purposefully vague at times, with a very deliberate side picked so as to express, "Hey Asians, I'm not here to criticize the way you were raised or talk about how history influences our present cultural norms, I'm just here to fight white power." Odd thing to convey when she is constantly talking about intersectionality.
Again though, I want to re-emphasize that I am Gen Z, and so my opinions are colored by personal bias. Having been fortunate enough to miss the worst of racism (that isn't to say I haven't experienced racism, since I have many times - just acknowledging that it's much more widely discussed, analyzed, and addressed now than it was before), and being born at a time where everyone has begun to focus on healing generational trauma, addressing abuse, and taking care of one's mental health, I skew towards wanting to address internal problems in one's community just as much as external ones.
April 17, 2021
I may not be best source on this. I got it after seeing it mentioned in college alum magazine [i was a year ahead of author and don't know her] and thought it sounded interesting, but I'm not naturally fascinated by corporations or business or how one does or doesn't get to "the C suite".
Sure enough, I wasn't tremendously interested in this one. She's a good writer, and adept at bouncing back and forth between general survey data or employment trends vs. personal anecdotes from her interviewees.
Nevertheless, for me it got a bit repetitive -- in a nutshell, Asian Americans, perhaps especially if their parents were recent immigrants (like author's), are devoted to executing the dictates of what she calls a "playbook" of guidelines for making it in the USA (work harder than hard, be deferential, try not to make waves......).......
.............and this works quite well for getting into selective colleges (to her credit, she notes that not everyone agrees with her that these colleges are fair in admissions to Asian Americans), getting awesome grades, landing solid entry-level jobs, and moving up to mid-level, responsible positions. But.........to be selected for positions at the very top of the business world, they'll need to go off-script from the playbook and work on "soft skills" (never really defined all that well, but by implication sort of schmoozing, being fun-but-not-out-of-control at office happy hours, knowing people from family connections and what not, being conversant with sports and pop culture.....).
Which sounds plausible to me [a business outsider to say the least], but gets a little old hearing from one after another ostensibly "stuck" interviewee.
Sure enough, I wasn't tremendously interested in this one. She's a good writer, and adept at bouncing back and forth between general survey data or employment trends vs. personal anecdotes from her interviewees.
Nevertheless, for me it got a bit repetitive -- in a nutshell, Asian Americans, perhaps especially if their parents were recent immigrants (like author's), are devoted to executing the dictates of what she calls a "playbook" of guidelines for making it in the USA (work harder than hard, be deferential, try not to make waves......).......
.............and this works quite well for getting into selective colleges (to her credit, she notes that not everyone agrees with her that these colleges are fair in admissions to Asian Americans), getting awesome grades, landing solid entry-level jobs, and moving up to mid-level, responsible positions. But.........to be selected for positions at the very top of the business world, they'll need to go off-script from the playbook and work on "soft skills" (never really defined all that well, but by implication sort of schmoozing, being fun-but-not-out-of-control at office happy hours, knowing people from family connections and what not, being conversant with sports and pop culture.....).
Which sounds plausible to me [a business outsider to say the least], but gets a little old hearing from one after another ostensibly "stuck" interviewee.
December 2, 2023
This book is a useful analysis of some of the bias that prevents Asian Americans from achieving the highest rankings within corporations. As others have pointed out in reviews, it partially controls for background and what I'll call "career starting conditions" by focusing on people who are seemingly set up for positive bias, namely, Ivy League+ (including non-Ivy but highly reputed schools like MIT and Stanford) graduates. I found it an informative read about a particular sliver of bias that hurts Asian Americans and common experiences among the group. It is a useful text to include in DEI education, focusing on Asian Americans.
The book is written in a very academic style and is in want of more thorough editing in a few places. And some of the final chapter and conclusion make it slightly difficult to recommend to others due to speculation and (relevant) political discussion. Nonetheless I do recommend this book.
The book is written in a very academic style and is in want of more thorough editing in a few places. And some of the final chapter and conclusion make it slightly difficult to recommend to others due to speculation and (relevant) political discussion. Nonetheless I do recommend this book.
August 8, 2023
If you think you need to be reminded that “soft skills” matter and that being authentic to work is important, then by all means buy the book. Otherwise it reads as a high schooler’s attempt at an assignment, with nothing but generalizations and platitudes presented as some sacred rare knowledge.
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May 10, 2025yuck
November 4, 2023
boy these ivy league grads sure got it hard
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews