Asian enough

A Lunar New Year reflection

Note: While writing the following piece, I reflected on whether I should post it for Chinese New Year. I worried that some of the heavier topics discussed about shame and internalized racism might take away from the cultural celebration of the holiday. Ultimately, I decided to post it, knowing that the things I discuss in this piece can be important and realistic to my experience, and likely to others’ experience as well, without taking the joy away from the celebration.

But my heart was made heavy this morning when I woke up to the news of the mass shooting in Monterey Park, CA, a city with a majority Asian population, following the start of their Lunar New Year celebrations last night. It’s still under investigation whether the shooting was a hate crime, but regardless, the lives of 10 people in an Asian-American community were taken away on the eve of one of the most important days for many such communities, at a time when celebration, happiness, and good wishes are supposed to abound. In Monterey Park, the joy has been taken away.

***

With today being the first day of the Lunar New Year celebration, I find myself reflecting on my Asianness.

I’ve always felt disconnected from my Chinese and Burmese identity. Being half white and half Asian, I felt like an imposter in both areas from a young age. I’ve never really felt “Asian enough,” though this is for pretty stereotypical, superficial reasons: I didn’t really like Asian food growing up, I don’t look super obviously Asian, I’m not into math and science. 

When I was younger, I felt strange talking about my Asianness around other people, so I never really did. This is especially because most, if not all, of the people around me were white. My elementary school, church, neighborhood, friend groups, sports teams — I was always surrounded by white people. 

There were two other Asian American girls in my grade school class, one of which I was very good friends with. This friend and I never really talked about or acknowledged our shared Asianness, not that I remember, though now I wish we had. I was not as close with the other Asian American girl in my class, who, like me, was half white, in addition to her Filipino heritage. This girl talked about her Asianness in our little white classroom in such a brazen way that it shocked me. I don’t remember joining in. 

The reason I didn’t talk about my Asianness with my (two) Asian friends was probably because I didn’t talk about my Asianness, period. The reason I felt disconnected, I think, wasn’t just because I didn’t look particularly Asian or love Asian foods, but also because of something deeper and darker, which pains and shames me to admit: I actively tried to distance myself from my Asian identity. 

Being Wasian — half white, half Asian — is something I’ve come to truly appreciate. But growing up, it was hard for me, even though I didn’t realize it at the time. Because I was positioned in the middle of whiteness and Asianness, I felt like I always had to choose one or the other. Even though I never felt Asian enough, I didn’t feel white enough either, my Asian identity always nagging in the back of my mind when I tried to push it away.

And I did try to push it away. My halved identity led me to feel like I had to be more of one thing than the other, like I had to choose. And naturally, I chose white. I’m now inclined to feel shame around this childhood desire to be fully and only white, but contextually, it makes sense. If presented the choice between being white or being “other,” it’s understandable that a child in my position would choose white. I say this because of the surrounding social frameworks constantly implying that “light is right,” to borrow from the wording of Cherrie Moraga in her essay “La Güera.”

Today, I attempt to study and examine white supremacy and heteropatriarchy in my academics, my writing, and my own personal reflection. As an elementary schooler, I was not aware of those systems in the way that I am now. But still, I truly, deeply felt their effects. I didn’t know about the terms “white supremacy” or “racism,” but I felt them. I knew, intuitively, without ever being told, that it was better to be white. To have a last name like Smith or Johnson, not Khaw. To have “normal” snacks packed in your lunch box, not shrimp chips. To be picked up from elementary school by a white mom or dad like everyone else, not by the only Asian guy within a five-mile radius. To have blonde hair, fair skin, and big blue eyes. 

I wanted those things so bad. I do have fair skin, which I considered myself lucky for. I took pride in it. I liked how it reddened and shriveled up in the sun, burning and transforming into freckles. Freckles like the ones that cover my mom’s face, and Pippi Longstocking’s. Not like my dad’s or my brother Timmy’s skin, which is tougher and browner and doesn’t even turn red when they play out in the sun for hours, just turns more tan. No, I was happy with the skin I had, my ability to burn and develop freckles, which the old people at church called “angel’s kisses,” which made me feel beautiful. To be fair skinned and freckled is to be kissed by angels, blessed by the heavens above.

I hoped that those freckles made up for my darker, almond-shaped eyes. I wanted big blue ones. Did other people see my eyes as slanted and squinted, betraying my otherwise ambiguous appearance and revealing my Asianness? Or did they see my eyes as round, like my mom’s? I swore that my eyes were hazel, not brown, and I felt insecure and borderline offended if someone called them brown or dark. I insisted, no, they’re light, like my mom’s! They have tints of green in them, if you look closely, and under a certain light, I mean, have you seen them out in the sun, or when I’m near the ocean? Or if I’m wearing a light-colored shirt? Really, they’re hazel. Not brown. 

And my hair. I made sure that everyone knew it was light brown, not dark brown, and certainly not black. I remember a friend called my hair black one time and it utterly shocked me. Threw me for a loop, because this whole time I thought my hair was light brown (with blonde highlights under a certain light during the summertime — no, really, look closer!), but someone just said it was black? Like, black? Well, at least it was frizzy and wavy, not like my dad’s coarse, straight, jet black strands. When I was alone, I draped my “Blankie” — which was white — over my head and danced in front of the mirror, pretending, wishing, I had blonde hair.

I didn’t like engaging with my Asian heritage — with my dad’s side of the family, with Chinese New Year traditions, with the Chinese and Burmese dishes my dad cooked. I didn’t like when my dad dragged me to the Asian supermarket, where it smelled weird and the foods were unfamiliar. I didn’t like when those weird smells then wafted through our house, embarrassed if any of my white friends came over and noticed the scent.

Knowing that I looked somewhat white or at the very least racially ambiguous, I tried to skim by as white, pushing away my Asianness. I liked the white part of me a lot better than the Asian. Now, I hate that I was so desperate to be perceived and to perceive myself as white, averse to my own Asianness. It was internalized racism; hatred and insecurity turned inward from a world of whiteness in which, my child self’s brain understood, to be anything but white was to be undesirable.  

By the time I got to high school, I didn’t necessarily dislike my Asianness. I no longer tried to hide or run away from it, nor did I feel shame around it. I suppose this change just came with a bit of age. I had grown out of my elementary school self, and realized that there really was no shame in my Asian identity at all. But I still didn’t love my Asianness; I merely accepted it. 

At my high school there was an Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) club, an affinity group for students of Asian descent. I think they met and had potlucks sometimes. I’m not entirely sure what they did, because I never joined the club. I never even looked into it.

As a younger kid, I had felt that because of my Asian background, I wasn’t white enough, and tried to do everything in my power to prove my whiteness — which, many times, meant abandoning my Asianness. As a high schooler, I had accepted my Asian heritage and stopped trying to push away from it. But because of years of separating myself from my identity, now I didn’t feel Asian enough — not enough to join the AAPI club, anyway. 

At times, it crossed my mind that maybe I could join. The club was for Asian Americans, and after all, I am Asian American, right? But somehow, I convinced myself that no, the club wasn’t for me. I worried that the members would look at me weird if I showed up, because the club was for real Asians. Asians who looked Asian, with coarse, straight, jet black hair and dark, almond eyes. Asians who liked Asian food, who shopped at the Asian supermarket, who knew things about their Asian heritage and respective cultures because they actually took the time to learn about it. Asians who, at the very least, acknowledged and embraced their Asianness all throughout their lives. Asians who weren’t ever ashamed when their Asian parents picked them up from school.

No, that club certainly wasn’t for me. I might be technically Asian, I figured, but I had removed myself too far from my Asianness to belong to a group like that, to share affinity with these people who were similar to me in this incomparable way, but different from me because of my own twisted, internalized, elementary school racism. I had drawn that line long ago. I could either be Asian or white, and I had chosen white early on. No turning back, I guess.

Since the beginning of high school, things have changed. I’ve changed. I began to learn about the world. I grew up more, grew to love and care for myself more, and in more ways than just my racial identity. I became surrounded by a lot more Asian American people at my high school than I had ever been during elementary and middle school. I saw how comfortable they were with their Asianness, talking about it casually with others and among themselves. 

And I saw the beauty of their Asianness. I remember an impactful moment when two Asian-American girls in the class above me shared a poem with the entire school. I can’t even recall exactly what the poem was about — their parents’ immigration? their Asian identity in general? — but I remember how it made me feel connected to them in a way I had never felt with anyone outside my family. What started as acceptance of my Asianness grew into increased fondness of and curiosity about my heritage, culture, and experience. I began to think about it more, to talk with my dad about it more, to perk up and actually listen when my Asian relatives began telling stories about our family history.

Then, I witnessed a mass racial reckoning in 2020, prompted by the murder of George Floyd. The events of that summer influenced my thinking and the trajectory of my life in multiple ways, but for one thing, it showed me the power of a people long oppressed in our country because of their race. It showed me people of all different backgrounds coming together to try to tackle systems and ideologies that loom larger than I had ever realized, and that impact our lives in more ways than I can understand even now. 

The Black Lives Matter movement stands for, as the name suggests, Black lives. But it also demands for justice in general, for the recognition and celebration of the sanctity of all life, of all races. In advocating for Black lives, they advocated for the lives of all people who are pushed to the margins by the deep-rooted forces of white supremacy and heterosexism. The widespread activism I witnessed in 2020 wasn’t just fighting for those lives, but celebrating them, uplifting them, reveling in their fortitude and resilience, in the beauty and strength that comes from color and diversity. 

I witnessed, too, the coronavirus pandemic, which originated in China. I witnessed increased violence, hatred, and xenophobia towards Asians and Asian Americans because of racism based on the origins of the virus. I witnessed anti-Asian sentiment perpetuated by the then-president of the United States in his continual blame on China for the pandemic, and his referral to COVID-19 as the “China virus.”

I witnessed the hateful massacre of Asian women in Atlanta in 2021. I witnessed a ruthlessly violent coup d’état by the tyrannical military in Myanmar, where my dad is from, and I witnessed the United States and the rest of the world do almost nothing meaningful to address it, while the vast majority of Americans remained unaware of the horrors taking place in the country from which my family originates. I talked with my dad about it, and I wrote about it.

As I came to realize the richness and beauty of my Chinese and Burmese heritage, and of all Asian cultures, I also saw more clearly the profound anti-Asian racism coursing through the social and political veins of our country, along with the anti-Black racism I had been awoken to. It explained my earlier aversion to my own Asianness. It demonstrated the potency of the social reverberations of widespread anti-Asian sentiment, how they can infiltrate the mind of a young girl, nest in her heart, spread within her a deep, dark history of revulsion and alienation of people like her in a country like this, and lead her to disown a part of herself before she even begins to conceptualize her own identity, before she even begins to try to make sense of herself and her Asianness in a country that detests anything but whiteness.

All of this drew the curtain even more for me, revealing that it was never my Asianness that was the enemy, but rather the forces that led me to hate my Asianness — which is my self — in the way I did. I began to understand that by disavowing my Asian identity, I was socially reproducing structures of racism, nourishing and elongating branches of the same tree whose limbs killed the women in Atlanta, and George Floyd, and so many others. To internalize my own oppression is to oppress.

I’m still coming to terms with all of this, figuring out how to reconcile with a personal history of pushing away my Asian identity. I’m taking steps towards an un-erasure of sorts, a re-writing of my relationship with my own identity. I owe my dad, my Asian American community, and myself reparations for the racial prejudice I reproduced when I pushed away from my Asianness. By attempting to erase myself, I was complicit in the erasure and harm of many others. 

With the Lunar New Year beginning today, I resolve to work on closing the chasm I put between myself and my Asianness. In the coming year, I will attempt to not just accept, but also to celebrate and love, my Asian identity — and all identities. I will replace my aversion to my Asianness with love, because there is so much to love and take pride in. I love the deeply-held traditions. I love the red envelopes stuffed with cash for Chinese New Year and eating longevity noodles to signify hopes for a long life. I love my family, and I feel a sense of pride in the generations who came before me, despite how little I know about them. I love shrimp chips, and I’d be glad to have them in my lunchbox now. Really, I love the food, and the way it’s not just food, it’s a center for culture and family, and how it brings me closer to my own culture and family, especially my dad. 

This year, and in coming years, I will continue in this quest to learn and appreciate more about my Asian heritage. I know that this love will grow even more, and that’s a cause for celebration and pride. I know that there are no quotas or standards I need to meet in order to fully and comfortably inhabit my own identity. Finally, I know that there is no such thing as being “white enough” or “Asian enough.” I am learning to love myself and my racial identity on my own terms, and that itself is enough. 

Kung hei fat choy! Great happiness and prosperity for the new year.