I have a confession to make. Some years ago, while enjoying solace in a cafe, a well-nourished white bloke accosted me by thrusting his newly purchased cookbook in my face and demanding an autograph. “I love your recipes,” he gushed. I signed his book with a flourish: “Love, Kylie K.”

Just to be clear, the Chinese-Australian chef Kylie Kwong and I both wear glasses but, beyond that, we share few similarities. I figured if this bloke is daft enough to think we Asians all look the same, why not bask in the fake celebrity limelight? What’s the harm in obliging him with a momentary mendacious act? (Apologies to Kylie, of course, whose recipes I also love.)

I’m not usually this reckless. As a child migrant, or generation Japanese-Australian, my parents drilled it into me as I was growing up that I was “an unofficial Japanese ambassador” to Australia, that my behaviour would influence how Australians feel about all Japanese. I was a well-behaved child, a quiet achiever at school, and now I’m a highly educated, professional, law-abiding Australian citizen. I’m not even a dual citizen. I could easily be a card-carrying member of Australia’s “Asian model minority”.

The Australian chef and author Kylie Kwong: not the author of this article. Photograph: Penguin

But being “good” and “quiet” and “assimilated” is making me angry. I’m fed up with the never-ending race work I have to do: explaining the differences between Chinese, Japanese, Korean; or suppressing the hysterical eruption in my head whenever I’m asked, “But where do you really come from?” And what pisses me off most royally is the odd occasion when I have to prove to editors that I can write “native-level English”. After a lifetime of race-splaining, I’m reaching peak race fatigue. And I’m not the only one.

Many Asian-Australians are also tired of navigating an incessant stream of microaggressions, sick of being exoticised or stereotyped as polite, reserved, a maths genius. Like me, they’re itching to be a little reckless, to break free from the narrow definitions that frame Asian-ness in today’s multicultural Australia.

On the face of it, you’d think we Asians would be grateful, being hoisted up on a pedestal for our relative success. After all, around the beginning of the last century we were the vile Yellow Peril and, more recently, we were accused of “swamping” this country. Yet here we now are, socially integrated and upwardly mobile, compliant workers valued for our economic usefulness. At least that’s what the Asian model-minority narrative would have us believe.

***

Esha Anura and Karen Chau could be called model-minority Asians, though I can almost see their eyes rolling back at the suggestion. Self-assured and scarily smart, they’re graduates of a selective high school for the academically gifted, famous for being notoriously difficult to get into. They represent the cream of academic high flyers, the one area in which Asian-Australians are standout overachievers. They rave about their school. And no, it wasn’t Hunger Games competitive, but collegial – “These really smart girls pushed me to try my best,” Karen tells me.

‘Asian Australians do value education, but not because of some cultural predisposition.’ Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Yet I sense a growing defensiveness and a niggling annoyance as we discuss the ethnic makeup of these public high schools. Nearly all selective schools in Australia are dominated by students from Asian backgrounds. Programs for gifted and talented students exist in all states, but New South Wales has by far the largest number, with around 50 schools compared with about four in Victoria. Some schools in Sydney can be as high as 90% Asian-Australian. That’s sparked a backlash and a heated debate.

Asian parents are being accused of “cheating the system”, angling for “an unfair advantage”, whipping their kids into exam-ready shape with gruelling hours at coaching colleges. One mother asks, “Isn’t that like child abuse?” She’s decided not to send her son to a selective school, even though he got in. Why? “Because there are too many Asians.” If you’re thinking that sounds racist, you’ll be interested to know that this mother is Asian-Australian.

Calling these schools “Asian schools” is reductionist, counters Esha. The distinguishing feature is not that the schoolyard is full of Asian faces, but the high value students place on education, she tells me. “Everyone valued being smart. They all want to study hard, go to uni.”

“Asians value education highly” is one of the many cultural traits attributed to us by the model-minority narrative. Here are some others: Asians have stable family backgrounds; Asians have a strong work ethic; Asians respect authority. Even Confucian virtues feature in this line-up, while other cultural-based explanations credit “tiger parenting” – those low-hovering mums and dads who advocate over-the-top methods in the pursuit of top results.

We’re welcomed if we come with money but not too much money, in case we buy up big chunks of prime real estate

Is there a grain of truth in all of the above? Perhaps. But here’s the problem: this mantra-ike trotting out of one-size-fit-all cultural traits not only ignores the historical, linguistic and ethnic diversity that is Asia but perpetuates a narrow essentialism that merely reinforces stereotypes. And in the “hyper-racialised” environment of selective schools, explains Christina Ho, a senior lecturer at University of Technology Sydney, such simplistic views can lead to “racialised hostility” – the kind that not only pits white people against Asians but also Asians against Asians.

When I was at school back in the 70s in the relaxed, beach suburbs of Sydney’s north, there were fewer Asian migrants and education policy favoured encouraging all kids – overachievers as well as those needing support – to attend local comprehensive schools. I mention this not as a nostalgic aside but to highlight two key Australian policies – immigration and education – that circumscribe the dynamics of the Asian model-minority narrative, both of which have been hijacked by neoliberal thinking in the past 30 years.

Esha is right. Asians do value education, but not because of some cultural predisposition. Our immigration policy cherry picks wealthier, skilled or business migrants who happen to come mostly from Asia for their potential to boost Australia’s economic interests. As newcomers with few established networks, they’re more likely to value education to ensure generational upward mobility. And many of these migrants tend to have higher levels of education, making them better equipped to decipher the maze of school choice, including analysing the Naplan results, explains Ho, who researches diversity and education.

She also explains that these aspirational migrants are doing exactly what is expected of them: successfully navigating the increasingly competitive, hierarchical education system. And if Asian students dominate selective schools that’s a consequence of the policy decisions made by Australian governments. To invoke Asian-ness, as if our innate cultural buoyancy makes us float to the top like cream, is just mythical thinking.

Like all myths though, the model-minority myth maintains traction because it’s useful. And the reasons why become clearer during my long conversation with Esha and Karen about education, identity, citizenship, multiculturalism. I ask them if they’d consider a future in politics and the discussion veers off into a sophisticated, intersectional analysis of the constraints of two-party politics. I’m in awe that they’d even consider the perils of high office, something I’ve never even fantasised about given that I hail from a country that once tried to invade Australia. But I’m dismayed when the topic of the “bamboo ceiling” comes up. We share our frustrations but we share no real solutions. Knowing that our aspirations have limits because our ethnicity precedes us is something we have in common as Asian-Australians.

I suspect this kind of ethnic containment is the role the model-minority myth plays in today’s multicultural Australia. It keeps us confined to a set script we didn’t write, lest we acquire any uppity notions. We’re encouraged to work hard but not too hard, in case we end up dominating all the top schools. And we’re welcomed into Australia if we come with money but not too much money, in case we buy up big chunks of prime real estate. I’m reminded of a Japanese saying: a protruding nail gets hammered. I’m also reminded of a misogynist joke about men putting women on a pedestal so they can look up their skirts. I feel as though we’re being put on a pedestal as model citizens, only to be humiliated by being rendered inert and invisible.

A La Trobe University lecturer, Tseen Khoo, calls this “contingent acceptance”. As perceived outsiders, our sense of belonging is always conditional on us being “good migrants”, meeting demands never made of those who enjoy white privilege. Don’t complain; be industrious; don’t end up on welfare; be grateful, always be grateful. And of course, a “good migrant” implies there’s a “bad”, which is where this myth becomes a divisive wedge fraught with danger.

In the US, where the term “model minority” was coined, the myth is used against African-Americans. Originating in the 60s, against the backdrop of the intensifying civil rights movement, the model-minority discourse extols the virtues of Asian-Americans in stark contrast to the “culture of poverty” attributed to African-Americans. This racial wedge may be more relevant today with the sharpening of identity politics. But the Korean-American cultural studies academic Jane Park, now senior lecturer at the University of Sydney, cautions me against comparative racisms. “We don’t have the same dynamic here,” she says.

Certainly, Australia entertains different racial fault lines. But the good-bad binary could be just as insidious here because Asian-Australians, Khoo claims, are appropriating it to police members of their own communities. This policing becomes more politically potent when ethnic leaders are involved, those who have a vested interest in constructing a cohesive community of “good” model citizens as a power base. Anyone stepping out of line is likely to be castigated and silenced.

So when the Chinese-Australian siblings Benjamin and Michelle Law published their book of deliberately in-your-face witticisms called Sh*t Asian Mothers Say, Khoo reminds me that they copped harsh criticism from certain sections of the Asian-Australian community for “trading in stereotypes that make Asians look bad”. I didn’t find the Law brand of maternal irreverence particularly funny, and said so at the time. But critiquing the book’s literary merits is one thing. Saying that it makes Asians “look bad” is a loaded judgment that vilifies the authors for deviating from the stereotype of the “good” Asian, as if there’s only one way to be Asian-Australian. This hostility to difference is worrying.

I can offer an antidote to this though: knock the Laws off their pedestal. It’s not as brutal or as inane as it sounds. Allow me to explain. I saw Michelle Law’s debut play, Single Asian Female, a family tale about a Chinese-Australian mother and two daughters. I was pretty excited to experience a production by and about Asian women, and the show was a sell-out. But I came away a tad disappointed that the play didn’t reflect my lived experience. How ludicrous of me to expect it to.

In multicultural Australia, all our individual narratives deserve equal exposure. But with so few of us punching above that bamboo ceiling, and with the Law clan being such affable overachievers, it’s easy to hoist them on to that pedestal, to expect them to represent all Asian-Australian voices. Which is just plain daft on my part, and no different from stigmatising them with the model-minority myth. The burden of representation shouldn’t fall on a select few individuals, not even the Laws. We need to rethink diversity as more than mere representation. Given the vast richness of Asian-Australian experiences, the burden is on all of us to fill the multicultural space with our diverse stories, complicate what it means to be Asian, drown out the one-dimensional myths.

• This is an edited extract from Griffith Review 61: Who We Are, edited by Julianne Schultz and Peter Mares