The struggle of fitting in as a minority child is not a new phenomenon, and I’m sure you’ve heard many stories of people of color feeling like ‘outcasts’ when they were younger. During these years, it’s common for such people to push away their culture and heritage. But an interesting turn – at least one that I have experienced – is the struggle to reclaim that culture once you’re older.
It’s an interesting chase. You push away your identity as a child, but then try to get it back once you’ve come of age. It’s almost ironic, like an unstable relationship of sorts. It’s something that is a part of you, but it isn’t something that you can connect to without effort.
This recently happened to me as I was entering college my freshman year. I come from a town that is majorly lacking in diversity, and I spent much of my childhood trying to distinguish myself from my background. Upon entering Emory, I decided that I wanted to reinvent my relationship with my heritage. I was done with being called “white-washed”, “banana”, "ching-ling", and other derogatory names back at home. I had always pushed away my ethnicity to protect myself, but I didn’t want to turn my back on my own identity anymore; instead, I wanted to embrace it.
I thought it would be easy. I thought that my culture would be something that was waiting for me with open arms. Perhaps it was naivety or ignorance – whatever the case, it was like my cultural identity had a mind of its own, and it was spiteful.
Emory’s student body is much more different than Dayton, Ohio’s. The first thing that I noticed was the number of people that looked like me. Half the student body had my black hair, my tanned skin, and my almond-shaped eyes. They spoke Chinese, knew how to use chopsticks, and grew up watching the same Chinese cartoons as me. It was such a comfort. I’ve always been starkly aware of being the only Asian in the room, but suddenly, I wasn’t anymore.
I met more Chinese people in my first week of college than I had ever in my life. We talked about our visits to China, our favorite Chinese foods, stigmas against Asian Americans, and more. It was a beautiful thing, being finally able to relate to someone culturally. It was a missing piece that I had longed for, and finally, I had found it.
However, with this new-found community, there were still differences. The Asians I had met came from a different world – they came from hometowns that were heavily populated with Asians, Asian restaurants, and other Asian things. By contrast, my town had a singular Hibachi restaurant and a boba shop that was 30 minutes away. I was astounded – unlike me, they had never lacked an Asian community. Suddenly, I had this odd feeling … this feeling that I wasn’t “Asian enough”.
And perhaps this feeling wasn’t just something I thought of myself, but it was also something that others saw, too. Just like my hometown, I was again subject to another “banana joke”: yellow on the outside and white on the inside. There were other microaggressions, like dog jokes and weird comments about my race that I would not have experienced if I were white. This past semester, the international students in my Chinese class even laughed at my group’s final project because our Chinese was not comparable to theirs.
I remember feeling so frustrated. I was taking Chinese classes. I was joining Asian organizations. I was trying to connect with other Asian people. And for some reason, it wasn’t enough. At the end of the day, I was still torn between two identities – American and Chinese – and it felt like neither wanted me. The two cultures were at odds with each other, and as a result, I couldn’t truly embrace either.
One would think that this is an odd thing to stress over, and I would tend to agree. I wasn’t born in China – I was born in Columbus, Ohio. I never lived in China, and thus, I’ve never properly experienced Chinese culture. What is the point of stressing over something that is literally and figuratively so far away?
And to be honest, I’m not entirely sure. I’m not sure when I’ll ever feel truly connected to my Chinese heritage, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to. And even if that day comes, my life problems will not be solved, and I will not suddenly become a better and different person. I guess this is an example of the journey truly being more important the goal – it is important to me to discover this for myself because it is my parents’ culture, and thus, it is mine, but there is no bright line as to when that will happen. However, it is a part of me that I will never be able to push away, no matter how hard I tried as a child. And what is the point of life if you don’t use your every effort to understand yourself?
In sum, there is no specific reason I can point to as to why this is so important to me, except that it feels right. My cultural rediscovery is because of my childhood memories of spending hours in the Asian supermarket as my parents picked the biggest fish to bring home, it’s because of the smell of cigarette smoke in the mornings in China, it’s because I can respond faster to my parents’ Chinese than my own thoughts, and it’s because of the smaller things, like keeping all of our plastic grocery bags for no reason and having no interior design capabilities. It’s so that one day, I can pass down family stories in Chinese just like my parents did for me: stories of my grandfather as a famous neurosurgeon in rural China and saving the lives of many, my father catching cicadas in the evenings as a child, my parents’ immigration to America, my grandmother’s life as a traveling opera singer, my grandfather’s stamp collection, and much, much more.
I like to think that my parents gave me a dual childhood of sorts: an American one with Chinese lining. I hope that one day, I can give my future child the same. I hope I can speak to them in fluent Mandarin, and I can cook them all my favorite Chinese dishes like beef chow fun (牛河), steamed tilapia, pressed tofu, and more. Most importantly, I hope to instill in them the same work ethic my parents did for me.
What terrifies me is my potential inability to do so, because if that happens, then the culture dies with me. In that event, I believe that my family’s Chinese heritage will begin to wither away until it becomes a stranger, and that is so, so scary to me.
But until that time comes, I will work as hard as I can to ensure that that world doesn’t materialize. It doesn’t matter with I’m “American enough” or “Asian enough” – so long as I am able to do my culture and my family justice, that is enough for me. And that is what makes the struggle so worth it, because one day the chase will be over, and despite the distance over the years, my culture and I will be reunited once again.
Comments