BuzzFeed Life

New York at dusk.

“She has to be part of the family now,” Orton told BuzzFeed News. “We thought making her part of the Savannah Bananas family would be pretty fun.”

For Asian Pacific American Heritage Month:

I guess the right word to describe me is 三世 - this is basically the Japanese term for “third-generation Japanese”. I’m only ¼ Japanese, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that I am, indeed, a third-generation Japanese person. My paternal grandmother passed long before I was born and my dad didn’t have a strong bond with his relatives in Japan, so unfortunately, I don’t have too many ties to my heritage. In my own time, I’ve researched what I could and for the past two years in school, I have been learning Japanese in order to be connected in some way. Now, with my background story aside…

For most of my life, I’ve found myself between being white and Asian. I’ve heard countless comments regarding my white side:

“You’re too white to be Asian/Japanese”

“Your eyes aren’t slanted enough”

“You’re not fully Asian”

I’ve also heard countless comments regarding my Asian side:

“You’re yellow”

“Can you do my math homework for me?”

“Your face is so flat”

The odd part, though, is that I heard the comments regarding my Asian side while living in the US. When I moved to Asia (the Philippines, specifically), I started hearing the comments regarding my white side more frequently; these comments came from various Asians, like Koreans, Taiwanese, and Filipinos. It’s strange that I am only an Asian girl when I’m in the US, yet I am a white girl when I’m in Asia. I still don’t understand why I am too Asian sometimes and not Asian enough other times. Despite all of this though, I’m proud of my heritage - both the Japanese part and the American part.