Thisā¦ is something I've been mulling over for a bit. It's been on the back of my mind for at least the past few months since the topic has kind of surged in the national conversation, but it's also just been something I've been thinking about for a good portion of my life.
So, I'm here today to talk about: What has being Asian (Chinese) American been like for me? How has it affected my life, and what does it mean for me?
(A brief disclaimer: This is a very personal take. While I do occasionally cite statistics and reddit historians (I do not use that term disparagingly), this is through the specific lens of my own life, filled with personal biases and anecdotal discussion. I obviously canāt and donāt intend to speak for all Asian Americans - my experience is not necessarily shared among all Asian Americans (or even all Chinese Americans or whatever), nor is any particular sentiment necessarily exclusive to Asian Americans.
With that out of the wayā¦)
Primarilyā¦ it means I don't belong anywhere.
To be fair, there's plenty of reason I feel I don't belong in society. I've mentioned in previous posts that I don't fit neatly into society's gender and sexuality expectations, and I'm also arguably just weird. Still though, it would be remiss to ignore the effect of being Asian American. After all, I donāt even really have a homeā¦
It's hard to call a place home when its leader, an individual elected by its people, openly promoted anti-Chinese hate.
And sure, we can nit at little details: he didn't win a majority (he only won 46%, and she didn't win a majority either); not everyone who voted for him believes in his racist statements (they were merely okay with the racism); is it really racist to simply remind people the virus originated in China by calling it the Kung Flu? (yes. yes it is)
But in the end, it's obviously not just him. Itās Hollywood, itās the dating market, the Bamboo Ceiling-
Itāsā¦ even history itself.
As far as I recall from high school history classes, U.S. history was full of white and black men and women, from George Washington to Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony to Martin Luther King, Jr. - but Asian Americans? I personally draw a complete blank. And well, Asian Americans were barely present: until sometime around 1970, Asian Americans made up less than 1% of the population. So, itās not exactly a surprise that we donāt show up in the events that have defined American history.
American history is not my history. My earliest ancestors in the states are literally my parents, who moved here together from China; they didnāt even meet here. On a visceral level, I canāt picture myself in American history: itās so devoid of people who simply look like me. I canāt see myself in America during the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, either of the World Wars. I have only a cursory understanding of what it would be like for me in Jim Crow era America. We Asian Americans didnāt even fight for our civil rights here: by the time the civil rights movement came to an end, as noted earlier we were still less than 1% of the population.
Okay but, who cares what history has to say, right? Maybe Asian Americans were absent before, but whatever - history was my least favorite subject, and itās not like I live in the past, so who gives a fuck. Letās focus on the present:
How are Asian Americans portrayed and viewed presently?
To borrow a tactic from Zootopia, let me ask a different question: Letās take a superhero thatās a stand-in for America, such as (the obvious) Captain America, or perhaps Superman - could they look like me? Could they be (East) Asian?
Maybe thatās asking for too much - what about Tony Stark, or Bruce Wayne?
How about just a main romantic lead (of a generic film, i.e. not one specifically about Asians, crazy rich or otherwise)?
Now, as a disclaimer: Asian representation has been growing more recently. Henry Golding is gorgeous alongside Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick in A Simple Favor; speaking of Golding, itās not quite fair to discount Crazy Rich Asians. And technically, there is a Chinese Superman - but heās the Superman of China, complete with Chinese flag outfit, and not American. But still, Chinese superhero, thatās cool - and Shang Chiās coming out in a couple days, and he is Asian American if I understand correctly.
For another disclaimer, itās not like Iāve actually run numbers or anything - I havenāt surveyed America and found that X% wouldnāt be able to accept an Asian American Superman, or reviewed a list of American rom coms and found that only Y% have an Asian lead when Asian Americans make up Z% of the population. The feeling that these individuals couldnāt be East Asian isnāt necessarily based in fact.
No, itās a feeling that comes from consistently seeing East Asian men be emasculated and desexualized en masse.
Because American men are always real men - while mostly white, they can be Black (e.g. Sam Wilson), but East Asian? Weāre nerds, small and weak, academically successful perhaps but lacking the communication skills to be an actual competitive threat sexually or in the career ladder. My mother told me to be more romantic, like white boys; she cited other Asian mothers, who were in turn citing their daughtersā preferences for charming American boys over us nerdy Asian boys. In one high school summer camp, we got on the topic of āwhat is your ideal partner like? what about least ideal?ā and I listened to this girl describe her least ideal romantic partner as a short, nerdy East Asian boy (yes, race was specified) - and you know that felt amazing for me. And finally, lest we ignore what every topic on masculinity is secretly about - well, everyone knows the stereotype about East Asian penises.
And for meā¦ itās not like I could rage and proclaim that these are unfair stereotypes or find some sick pride in being ābetterā than the stereotypes - I am short, and weak - and while Iām fine socializing with friends, I am terribly awkward in most career settings. What response did I have when society reminded me, incessantly, how worthless East Asian men are, how worthless I am?
Alright, I think itās time to pack it up here boo hoo, toxic masculinity sucks. Besides:
Maybe itās simply that I donāt belong in āwhiteā America.
That must be it, right? I have this deep sense of being āotheredā because I donāt belong to the majority, normative ethnicity in America - but nearly 40% of America isnāt white. Surely, I must fit in with them?
But political discourse on race in the U.S. has always treated the topic ratherā¦ black and white, literally and figuratively. Where do we fit in as Asian Americans? Weād like to not be discriminated against, like other minorities. On the other hand, the biggest political topic for Asian Americans recently has been affirmative action, where Asian Americans are in direct opposition to other minorities: anecdotally, Iāve heard of a number of Chinese Americans who voted for Trump solely to get a conservative Supreme Court justice who would remove affirmative action, and itās not like I havenāt felt the negative effects of affirmative action, as an Asian American applying for a position at MIT and then a job in the tech industry. Iāve seen Twitter tear apart an Asian American writer for not being a ārealā minority, and Iāve seen vitriolic anti-Black hate in Asian communities.
And this has always been the case: Asian Americans have always been this āthird group in a biracial societyā (to quote this fascinating reddit answer about Asian Americans in the Jim Crow South). (As for why, this other reddit answer discusses some of the motivations behind the white Americans who alternately treated (and even labeled) Asian Americans as white in some scenarios yet excluded them in others: spoiler, it was to ensure that opportunities didnāt leak to the Blacks).
So, in a political discourse that only really has room for black and whiteā¦ thereās no space for us. We donāt belong in the conversation.
Fine then - What about China?
Yes, of course, my home must be China.
Where people look like me.
Where everyone in my extended family lives.
A place Iāve only been to once, after I had already matured to adulthood, with beliefs that run completely counter to those prevalent there.
A place where I can only use the barest of communication, just enough to ask āwhereās the bathroom?ā with a laughably atrocious American accent.
So yeah, thereāre a couple of issues: mismatched value sets, a communication barrier. But really, the biggest issue for meā¦ is actually the shame. And itās not even the obvious, really terrible stuff like the awful authoritarian government and the rampant corruptionā¦ what honestly hits me the hardest is that the entire country has produced nearly nothing of cultural interest while Iāve been alive.
To be fair, how do you even create anything worthwhile with all the censorship? Right off the bat, homosexuality and fantasy (essentially) are banned (so Iād be completely fucked, given my two primary writing interests). And of course, you canāt complain about the government, or even insinuate that society might not be some sort of flourishing paradise. Top it off with a culture that focuses on STEM studies over creative ones, that values the collective over individuals - and itās impossible to create art.
Thatās not strictly true of course. Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle) is objectively hilarious. The Departed won Best Picture for straight up copying a Chinese movie, Infernal Affairs (though thatās technically a Hong Kong movie). Genshin Impact is beautiful (though itās worth noting that the developers are self-proclaimed otakus); the animation in Black Myth: Wukong looks incredible. And I loved The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin.
But it still feels like so, so little. Korea has had an extensive music industry, and Japanese anime has been beautiful, producing many of my all-time favorite films and series. My favorite series, Avatar:TLA and TLoK, was animated primarily by Korean studios (Korra was partly animated by a Japanese studio). Ragnarok Online and Dragon Nest, two MMORPGs I played, were both created by Korean developers, as was Maple Story; Pokemon is a Japanese game.
My friends and I consumed so much Korean and Japanese content - but if I wanted something Chinese, so I could feel some semblance of pride in my ethnicityā¦ there was nothing. Just a giant fucking desert - complete with two oases next door to taunt and shame me.
And there does exist a rich culture. Thereās the martial arts, interesting mythologies, a long and rich history. Hell - I donāt love Chinese food, but I will add dumpings ācause theyāre fucking delicious. But, even though all of this existsā¦ itās not my culture: I wasnāt really brought up Chinese. A lot of families will bond over food, especially the making thereof (e.g. the ending of the Pixar short, Bao), but my parentsā¦ werenāt about that. I didnāt do Chinese dance (unlike my sister) or kung fu; we barely celebrated holidays; as I mentioned, I donāt even speak the language.
And I donāt mean to blame my parents too much for all of this. After all, there are costs to not assimilating - I actually only spoke Chinese at a young age and was bullied for it, thereās a reason we switched to English only as a family. But the blame doesnāt matter - the result is, well-
I am culturally orphaned. China is not my home.
But obviously - I belong with other Asian Americans.
Maybe I donāt really belong with the rest of the U.S., or in China - but surely, surely, you might say, I cannot possibly argue that my ethnicity as an Asian American somehow distances me from others with that exact same ethnicity.
And youāre right. I am Chinese American - complete with the Tiger Mom, the STEM focus, playing piano and violin, interest in video games, anime, even the faux rebellious splash of dyed hair, the fucking glasses - of the six people in my recent office cubicle, four were East Asian men with glasses.
And whatever, sue me for being hypocritical. After whining for so long about not belonging - I hate fitting in. I am drowning in a sea of people who look like me - straight black hair, dark brown / black eyes, yellow skin, the fucking glasses - in orchestra, in AP classes, at MIT, in tech.
I think the moment I felt this pain the sharpest was fall of high school senior year, when I was applying to college. I needed to convince MIT and other elite universities that I was worth admitting, that I would provide something of value, something different from the bajillion other East Asian American (male) applicants. And when I looked back on my seventeen years on this rockā¦ I couldnāt. I wasnāt a person, I was a stereotype. Yeah maybe I was good in my role - I outshone my classmates in the maths and sciences - but I had one dimension. And I hated it, I hated myself, I felt like I didnāt exist - no one would care if some faceless Asian American kid with no other defining features were to justā¦ disappear.
And well - thereās also how society perceives East Asian men. how I perceive(d?) us. And I didnāt want to associate myself withā¦ that.
So I began to distance myself - to define myself, in little ways, by how I didnāt fit the Asian American stereotype. And of course other Asians have done the same, so much so that itās a stereotype of its own (yes Iām referring to the dyed hair). But, unhealthy as it may be, it worked - I feel like a person now. I am depressed and nihilistic, I love movies and animation, I love being creative and talking about sex, Iāve embraced the more feminine aspects of myself. Iām not just the Asian American stereotype - Iām me.
Alright, but who is āmeā? Well, to understand that, letās talk about:
What does a ānormalā family look like anyway? Weāre taught from a young age that a family unit has a mother and a father. And so far, my family fits.
But then thereās the siblings, the extended family. Visiting Grannie with sweets, having built-in peers in the form of siblings and cousins. Iā¦ didnāt really have that. With a 9 year age gap, my sister and I werenāt really āpeersā in any meaningful sense until fairly recently. While I do technically have extended family, theyāre all in China and, besides one grandparent, Iāve only met them once, not to mention the language barrier. Speaking of grandparents, three of mine died before I was born (two of them essentially to Chinese communism). The concept of visiting grandparents and getting spoiled wasā¦ simultaneously ubiquitous as a trope yet alien to me - my grandpa was only ever in China or in my home, not someplace we could visit - and when he was homeā¦ letās just say I was very similar to David in the Minari trailer.
Combine that with moving three times before middle school and wellā¦ I was a lonely child. All I āhadā were my parents. But, after a brief time, in which I conveyed and they understood my needs for food, sleep, and potty - our communication broke, around when I was 7. Something about me wanting to have fun and make friends conflicted with their belief that I should dedicate my time solely to my studies, that play was ruinous poison for my soul.
When I was a sophomore in high school, in early 2011, the Tiger Mom entered the national conversation. I was, of course, intimately familiar with the phenomenon - not only was my mother such a figure, but many of my Asian American peers had similar parents (which naturally compounded with my motherās own tendencies and beliefs by encouraging her). Contrary to many Tiger parent situations, it wasnāt the high parental expectations that I struggled with - my own expectations for myself were fairly high and not altogether unachievable - it was the way that, beyond academic achievement (and, on some level, physical health - canāt go to MIT if Iām dead!), nothing else mattered. Socialization was discouraged, play was practically outlawed, as was dating. Meanwhile, western media and peers with more Americanized parents lived much freer lives, taunting me while I languished behind prison bars
I needed more freedom than that parenting style allowed. I was raised in a country whose central tenet is ~Liberty~; meanwhile, I was only permitted to use the internet in full view of my mother, and basically only to do homework. I did eventually stage my own revolution and gain some semblance of freedom, but the friction between my need to be free and their paternalistic beliefs led to near-constant conflict. I grew up with a lot of anger, and while it doesnāt necessarily show often, a lot of it persists within me and I can be a deeply bitter person.
I think the most damaging effect though of my Tiger parenting was actually the way it stunted my sense of agency, control, identity. The whole idea is that the parents know best: the best thing for children is to get into a good college, and the best way to do so is to focus on academics and a set of standard extracurriculars (i.e. piano and violin). And thereās some wiggle room within that track - you can play clarinet instead, itās up to you if you want to take AP World History - but choosing to stray from (or, heaven forbid, leave) the path? Having the freedom to choose how to spend my free time, how to live my life - to take a college class outside my major / graduation requirements because I loved bio and chem and missed it? It wasnāt my life I was living, it was the life my parents had chosen for me. That was a big part of why, as I described earlier, at 17 I felt like I wasnāt a person - after all, what are we if not our choices? The little sense of identity I had was defined in rebellion, not just against the confines of the stereotypes of Asian Americans but also the confines of my parents.
Thatāsā¦ a big part of why I feel so alone, even now as an adult. I socialize often, I have friends - but, as described earlier, I donāt have family. I couldnāt rely on my parents for emotional support - how could I talk to them about the shame of trying to date as an East Asian American male when they didnāt even think I should be dating in the first place? We werenāt even in the same textbook, let alone on the same page. When Iām at my most generous, I donāt necessarily blame them - when you boil it all down, we simply have different worldviews, having been brought up in two vastly different settings. But still - even at my most generous - I have to recognize that they just cannot provide what I need, and they will never understand me.
Whew. Alright, that wasā¦ long. Props to you for making it this far (and no shame if you skimmed). But wellā¦
Why did I bother writing this?
Like I said in the beginning - this is something Iāve been mulling over for a bit. With the Atlanta shooting earlier this year, discussion of the Asian American experience began to circulate prominently in the national discourse and was continued in AAPI Heritage Month in May, and I naturally compared my experience with what I was reading. Even earlier though, a couple years ago, I wrote a post on The Farewell in which I talked about bringing oneās experience as an Asian American into art and well, thatās really what I want to talk about.
We talk a lot about diversity in art. One aspect is stuff likeā¦ having an Asian superhero, or having Asian characters. And there is certainly value in that - in being able to see myself in these roles, in reminding people that we are more than just shallow stereotypes - even in the simple acknowledgment that we exist.
But on a deeper level, thereās the diversity of experience: my life simply isnāt well-reflected by stories told by white people in America. One of the most tilting movie experiences for me was the opening of Love, Simon: the main character opens with āIām just like you. For the most part, my life is totally normalā before describing his perfect little family, completely free for example from the strife of having parents of a different culture. I have never related less to a character - which would be completely fine if the movie didnāt open with such a presumptuous assessment of my life and a completely alienating assertion of what normalcy is.
Meanwhile, stories like Bao resonated with me, not just because of superficial things like skin tone or even things like the Chinese supermarket calendar, the pork bao itself, or the buns from the bakery - rather, it was the motherās overprotectiveness, a trait that defined my own relationship with my mother. Likewise, I related to Sanjayās Super Team because, even though the characters werenāt Chinese, it was one of the best depictions of the inter-generational divide Sanjay and I both experienced as children of immigrants.
So yes - itās nice (and valuable) to see things like Henry Golding being hot, and Simu Liu being a superhero. But what I really want is to see these other themes explored - the lack of a loving home country, the cultural orphaning, the shame of association, the generational culture clash - thatās why, in Fireflower, Iāve written my main protagonist as a mixed race orphan, because I wanted to write about that feeling of not belonging to two opposing cultures and the disconnect from oneās family history. While there are plenty of stories that address discrimination (e.g. Mudbloods in Harry Potter, Dr. Seussās Sneetches), itās only a small fraction of my Asian American experience - and sure, there are reasons it shows up: itās important, and actually addressable (we can stop discriminating, but no oneās going to āsolveā the culture clash), and itās the only part of the minority experience that the majority ethnicity is really involved inā¦
But the rest is still complex and interesting and a part of the broader human experience. Itās worth exploringā¦ and thatās what I hope to do in my writing.
