Mirador Graphic Designer and Social Media Director Sophia Luo reflects on the complexities of the Asian American identity based on her lived experiences SOPHIA LUO Growing up, I never really understood what it meant to be Asian American. I knew that in February, my grandparents gave me red envelopes containing money (which my parents would immediately confiscate). I knew that my family spoke a language at home that I didn’t hear at school. Yet there were a lot of things I didn’t know. I didn’t know that my friends didn’t eat rice at every meal, or that my skin color made me different. In kindergarten, a boy told me that I didn’t look like him. He pulled the outer corners of his eyes and stared at me with scrutiny. At home, I asked my parents, “Are we yellow?” My mom stared at her five-year-old daughter in shock. How were they supposed to respond? My favorite fictional characters never looked like me. The few Asian characters I encountered were never the protagonists of the story. Aside from admiring Disney’s Mulan or identifying with J.K. Rowling’s token East-Asian character, Cho Chang, I rarely saw myself represented in the media. Even as I matured and took an interest in more advanced dystopian Young Adult books, characters like Tris Prior from “Divergent” and Katniss Everdeen from “The Hunger Games” still didn’t resemble my appearance. In middle school, I became blatantly aware that I was different. Living in the Lamorinda area meant that I was always a racial minority among my classmates. I gravitated toward other Asians because they made me feel safe; maybe we found a community in each other. Yet I started questioning my identity. Bitterly, I wished that I was white, and I thought my life would be easier if I was. My eyes stared contemptuously at their reflection in the mirror. I colored my hair, concealing its original shade of black under an artificial brown. I hated my culture, my native language, and my heritage. When my parents spoke to me in Mandarin, they faced a 12-year-old daughter who reprimanded them and told them to speak English. I refused to wear a traditional dress during Chinese New Year celebrations. I stopped speaking Mandarin altogether. I even stopped eating rice. In my family’s frequent travels, we often spent time with people from China with whom my parents were connected. Whether we were in Canada, Hong Kong, or even rural Italy, their nostalgic conversations were always similar. When I talked to these people who only spoke Mandarin or Cantonese, I often felt embarrassed. My American accent peeked through the limited vocabulary I used, and my words were hesitant in comparison to the quick sentences of a native speaker. Though they all stayed polite and told me I was a great Mandarin speaker, I knew I wasn’t on par with them. Even when surrounded by people who looked like me, I still didn’t fit in.
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