“You’re normal though.”
“Don’t turn super Asian, please.”
“Of course Diane knows how to use chopsticks.”
“You’re the whitest Asian I’ve ever met.”
“But you don’t act Asian, so it’s fine.”
Have you ever looked at yourself and realized that you’re an alien?
In eighth grade, my parents and I were the only Asian family who lived in our county and I was an alien in a sea of rich, blonde, white athletes. I remember wanting nothing more than to be white. I wasn’t allowed to wear makeup, so every day I used an eyebrow brush to push up my eyelashes that stuck straight out. I analyzed every move I could from the girls who sat next to me in the hope that I could trick other people into thinking I was just as worthy of existing. I had the same headband and backpack, so I’m cool, right?
Then, we moved further north and immediately everything changed. High school was swimming with cliques that were dying to label themselves amongst the diverse demographic. I was no longer an alien. I discovered that I could fall under the category of “Asians who are puppets of their tiger moms and have 4.0s,” “Athletic Asians who play sports and are popular,” or “Asians embodying teen angst and who smoke.”
My overly self-conscious 14-year-old self-realized that I fell under none of these. Where were “Asians who are kind of shy, but loud sometimes, and play music?” Even if that label existed, another one trumped it. I pathetically attempted everything that I could to hide all of the stereotypical Chinese parts of me from the public eye. I brought bland PB&J’s for lunch and sometimes threw out whatever my mother put in my lunchbox that was from H-mart. I bought sweatpants and T-shirts that I could have gone without because other people wore them all of the time. I bought Sperry’s and Uggs. I never spoke of the violin as though I enjoyed it and, thus, most of my life was unknown and misunderstood by my friends at the time.
The disgusting part about all of these attempts at being “white” were that they worked. As I pretended to be just as Vera Bradley and Ron Jon Surf Shop as the rest of the peers, I started to believe that I wasn’t a part of the culture in my household. Eventually, new people who I met did not associate me with any of those Asian stereotypes because my friends were white, I dressed like a white person, and I spoke like one. I started receiving comments like “you don’t act Asian, so it’s fine,” and falsely feeling complimented whenever they happened.
I’m definitely not the only person who has performed these attempts at “normality” in a predominantly white society in order to void the stereotypes of Asian-Americans. However, there definitely exist a fair share of people who are still swallowed into the world of hiding their home and I wonder if they are still attempting to mask their identity through their Instagrams or if their identity has evolved into the mask.
Ann Arbor inspired the realization that I had been masking my own identity. Being surrounded by loving people of all different backgrounds, ethnicities, and sexual orientations opens up how true a person is to themselves. Now, as a 20-year-old Chinese-American violinist, I can comfortably declare that I’m d*mn proud of my roots. No one should have to hide their backgrounds, trying to prove how “white” they are, in order to gain respect from their peers. Having a family and culture bigger than the small confines of suburbia is a blessing. I will always be refreshed, knowing that my relations do not end in the area where I grew up.
