In the spring of his freshman year at Baruch, Wong was approached by a ‘‘neophyte’’ (the word for a newly anointed brother) in Pi Delta Psi. Given Baruch’s commuter-­student culture, where most students socialized with their friends from city high schools, Pi Delta Psi’s recruitment strategy was to approach all eligible males, even some non-­Asians, and ask them to join. Wong went to a meeting, got along with a few of the guys there and decided to give the fraternity a shot.

Until he pledged Pi Delta Psi, Wong said, he did not know how badly his people had suffered. He did not know about the death of Vincent Chin. He did not know about Korematsu v. United States, the 1944 Supreme Court case that upheld Franklin D. Roosevelt’s executive order to send Japanese-­Americans to internment camps. As he immersed himself in Pi Delta Psi’s misshapen yet still revelatory history of Asian-­American oppression, he grew increasingly frustrated with the gaps in his New York City public-­school education. Wong said the omissions were unfair. ‘‘I didn’t understand why we wouldn’t focus on a certain ethnic group or why we would ignore it,’’ Wong said. ‘‘Sometimes, it felt like things that happened to Asians were less important.’’

The new education changed him; the silence that separates so many immigrant children from their parents began to close. For the first time in his life, Wong talked to his mother about her early days in the United States, the fear she had felt in a country where she did not speak the language, the small yet persistent flare-­ups in which she could feel both her invisibility and her irrelevance in a country dominated by whites. He said he never felt closer to his mother than in those early days of his awakening. ‘‘You know how it is with Asian parents,’’ Wong said. ‘‘If you don’t ask them about their lives, you won’t find out.’’ He started to feel as if he were part of something. Wong was offered a ‘‘bid’’ and began Pi Delta Psi’s pledging process, where he learned more about the oppression of Asian-­Americans, the same lessons he would teach Michael Deng a couple of years later.

On May 15, three and a half years after Michael Deng’s death, Kwan, Lai, Lam and Wong again filed into the Stroudsburg courtroom, where dark oil paintings of dead men hung on the walls, framed by dusty red drapes. Just two weeks before, eight brothers who belonged to Penn State’s Beta Theta Pi fraternity were charged with manslaughter in yet another hazing death, this one involving an 18-year-old pledge named Timothy Piazza. The similarities between the two cases — Piazza, like Deng, died after going through something called ‘‘the gauntlet’’ (though physical abuse was not part of the ritual) — brought out more reporters than might have been expected, and as they set up in the hallways of the courthouse, many of the questions were about Penn State.

Kimberly A. Metzger, an assistant district attorney, sat at the table reserved for the state. She leaned back in her chair, staring out at the gathering gallery. The families squirmed, and their narrow, wooden seats creaked, but there were none of the consoling or furtive glances among the defendants that there had been on earlier court dates. They did not look at one another as Metzger briefly summarized the roles they had played in Michael Deng’s death — the tackles, the text messages, the delays in seeking medical help, the scramble to dispose evidence that would tie them to Pi Delta Psi. When the judge asked if they were aware of what their pleas meant, they said ‘‘yes’’ in meek unison.

The Pi Delta Psi brothers pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and hindering apprehension. (About 30 members of Pi Delta Psi, including Andy Meng and Revel Deng, are still facing lesser charges connected to Michael Deng’s death. The fraternity itself has also been charged with third-­degree murder and other crimes. And the Dengs have filed a civil suit against the defendants.) Lai, Wong, Lam and Kwan will not be sentenced until the end of this year. According to Pennsylvania guidelines, the recommended sentence for these charges for a defendant with no criminal record is 22 to 33 months.

Asians are the loneliest Americans. The collective political consciousness of the ’80s has been replaced by the quiet, unaddressed isolation that comes with knowing that you can be born in this country, excel in its schools and find a comfortable place in its economy and still feel no stake in the national conversation. The current vision of solidarity among Asian-­Americans is cartoonish and blurry and relegated to conversations at family picnics, in drunken exchanges over food that reminds everyone at the table of how their mom used to make it. Everything else is the confusion of never knowing what side to choose because choosing our own side has so rarely been an option. Asian pride is a laughable concept to most Americans. Racist incidents pass without prompting any real outcry, and claims of racism are quickly dismissed. A common past can be accessed only through dusty, dug-up things: the murder of Vincent Chin, Korematsu v. United States, the Bataan Death March and the illusion that we are going through all these things together. The Asian-­American fraternity is not much more than a clumsy step toward finding an identity in a country where there are no more reference points for how we should act, how we should think about ourselves. But in its honest confrontation with being Asian and its refusal to fall into familiar silence, it can also be seen as a statement of self-­worth. These young men, in their doomed way, were trying to amend the American dream that had brought their parents to this country with one caveat:

I will succeed, they say. But not without my brothers!

Michael Deng’s family still lives in the sparsely furnished two-­story home in Queens where he spent most of his life. Inside, the only concessions to decoration are a glass cabinet and, on the mantel, a forest of Michael’s trophies. As I spoke with his mother — we sat on leather couches that had been meticulously cleaned and bore none of the markings of children in the house — Michael’s father, his thinning hair dyed and slicked back, his hands resting anxiously on his knees, sat nearby. Whenever she started talking about anything other than her son’s early years, she switched from Mandarin to English, a language Michael’s father had not yet learned. She was heeding his doctor’s orders: He had recently had heart surgery and had been advised to stay away from any sort of anxiety-­inducing activity, including conversations about his dead son.