There are few grand narratives that loom over Asian Americans more than the model minority. Rather than disproving the model minority, Assistant Professor of English Takeo Rivera instead argues that Asian Americans have formulated their racial and gendered subjectivities in relation to what Rivera terms model minority masochism. Examining hegemonic masculine Asian American cultural performance across multiple media, from literature and theater to video games and activist archives, Rivera details two complementary forms of contemporary racial masochism: a self-subjugating masochism which embraces the model minority, and its opposite, a self-flagellating masochism that punishes oneself for having been associated with the model minority at all.