Growing up Asian American
When was the first time you realized you were different?
I was probably eight years old, walking through the halls of my elementary school with my teacher, Mrs. Ramsey. As we were walking, a younger boy suddenly pulled his eyelids to make slits and yelled “Ching chong ching!”
I can’t tell you exactly how old I was, what I was wearing, what I was talking about with my teacher or where the boy appeared from. But I can tell you that’s the first time I remember being ashamed of being Korean.
At the time, I wasn’t sure why this was so embarrassing. I knew I was adopted and Korean, and I knew that I was one of only a handful of Asian kids in my school (I can recall three, including me, out of approximately 350 kids) — so why did this come as such a shock? Why did I feel a deep sense of shame permeating throughout my body?
It was the first time my “otherness” was pointed out directly to me. It was also probably the first time I thought of myself as ugly.
Later in elementary school when I was in fifth grade, we were assigned to research our family history and speak about where we came from. Where I came from? Did this mean Seoul or Pittsburgh? Was I supposed to write about the biological parents that I didn’t know or my adoptive parents that I didn’t share any DNA with? Imagine what a mind fuck this was as an 11 year old.
So, I wrote about my adoptive parents’ histories, essentially claiming that despite my ink black hair and slanted eyes, I too was German and Italian. In other words, I totally denied my Korean heritage. And that’s the first time I remember being ashamed of being adopted.
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Let me ask you another question — have you ever thought you had to become someone you didn’t like in order to fit in? In order to survive?
I often think about how big of a bully I was growing up. I was smart (I tested into the gifted program); I was athletic (I was a competitive gymnast and was routinely the first girl picked in gym class); I was artistic (I loved to draw and sought the praise of my art teacher constantly); I was musically inclined (I was first chair clarinet). In short, I was pretty good at many things — and if I wasn’t, I’d make myself through sheer will. Because I was better than the majority of kids at most activities, I took it upon myself to make my superiority known. In essence, I was a sarcastic asshole of a kid who was constantly putting other people down.
Maybe I was just a jerk, plain and simple. But what I think is more likely is that I became this jerk as a deflection. If I could point at everyone and say, “Look at how stupid you are!” then they couldn’t point at me and say, “Look at how Asian you are!” If I beat them to the punch and took them down first, they couldn’t come after me. They couldn’t squint their eyes at me and yell, “Ching chong ching!”. They couldn’t call me chink. They couldn’t ask me if my vagina was slanted like my eyes. They couldn’t ask me why I didn’t look like my parents. They couldn’t ask me why my “real parents” didn’t love me enough to keep me.
So, I became this little ball of meanness so that I could survive my childhood.
Later in life when I was a teenager, I started to joke about being Asian. I’d call myself the token Asian of my friends; I’d hold up the peace sign in pictures and squint my eyes even more; I’d call myself a Twinkie (yellow on the outside, white on the inside). If I couldn’t stop the jokes, then I’d at least be the one making them. Put another way — if I couldn’t stop the pain, then I’d at least be the one inflicting it on myself.
So, I became the butt of my own jokes so that I could survive my teenage years.
When I got to college, I assumed I’d finally be someone who was defined not by the fact that she was Korean or that she was adopted, but by who I was. Turns out that wasn’t totally the case. As with most college campuses and experiences, sex was everywhere. It seemed like everyone was fucking all the time. But whenever I’d start seeing someone or would hook up with someone, the usual response was, “Oh, he has an Asian fetish?” So I assumed that every guy who showed interest in me was only interested in fetishizing me. I assumed that guys didn’t really want me, as in the person — they only wanted me, as in my Asianness. This made it impossible to get close or be vulnerable with anyone because I almost always doubted that I was good enough or lovable. I was only fuckable.
So, I became the girl who fucked but didn’t get close, who built up emotional walls so that I could survive my college years.
I didn’t want to be these things — mean to everyone else, belittling of myself, emotionally closed off — but I became these things in response to what I was told about myself. I wasn’t writing my own narrative. Instead, I had become a supporting character in everyone else’s stories. I didn’t see myself anywhere I looked — I wasn’t represented on TV, in books or in music. I had no reference points to understand that I didn’t have to define myself in opposition to my white friends. So if everyone wrote me in as the Asian girl in their narrative, that’s who I thought I was.
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The last question I’ll ask you — when did you finally realize that you don’t have to define yourself in relation to anybody else? That you are free to be who and what you want? That the shape of your eyes or color of your skin or the fact that you’re adopted doesn’t ultimately make you who you are?
Maybe now. Maybe never. It’s a journey that takes a lifetime and has no end destination. It’s a moving target, and it takes constant work, constant rewiring of your brain to tell yourself that you are enough, that you are beautiful and worthy.
The last few years have been the critical part of my own journey, and I can say that it hasn’t been easy. It’s been painful and difficult and isolating. It’s forced me to reevaluate my childhood, my friendships and my values — but I think it’s made me a stronger, more self-assured person who is able to empathize and feel more deeply than I ever thought possible. It’s taught me that it’s okay to be messy and complicated — that it’s okay to feel the good and the bad, equally. It’s the struggles and working through them that make me who I am. Without the bad in my life, I wouldn’t be able to fully recognize the good.
