Growing up Asian American

Gregory Fung

Maddy Ting

In a world where heartbreaking news of attacks against Asians has become commonplace, celebrating Asian Pacific Heritage Month has become even more essential in bringing light to the struggles that our fellow community members face. Read the stories of Anjali Mehta, a Carlmont student and Gregory Fung, a physics teacher at Carlmont, as they share their pasts, as well as their hopes for the future.

Anjali Mehta, a junior, was born to parents who immigrated here. Her mother came to America after she had gone to med school in India straight from high school, while her father went to college in Canada. After getting married, they moved to the Bay Area and eventually to Belmont after having her and her sister. Every so often, the family returns to India to visit the rest of their family.

“My immediate family and my dad’s brother are really the only people that live in America, while the rest of our extended family lives in India and Dubai,” Mehta said.

Upon coming to Carlmont, Mehta joined the Indian Club. She rose to become its president for the 2020-2021 school year.

“High school was the first time that I did something to connect with my heritage on my own outside of my family. Two years ago, it was the first time that I went to a Holi celebration in Foster City with my friend and not with my family,” Mehta said. “I think that it’s important to celebrate your heritage with your family, but it’s also good to have people in your community, whether it’s at school or your peers.”

Yet celebrating her heritage outside of her family hasn’t always been easy. As a child, Mehta faced criticism from her classmates due to differences in their lifestyles and culture.

“When I was in elementary school, I’d bring food that my mom would make for me to school, and then the other kids would say ‘you eat with your hands?’ and ‘that’s disgusting.’ And when I was a kid, I was like, ‘oh yeah of course that’s disgusting,’ like all these kids are eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with a knife and fork,” she said.

“I would ask my mom to pack me less Indian food and to not speak Hindi in front of my friends. I grew up with this wish that I was white or that I just looked a little bit more like my peers.”

Now that she’s older, Mehta reflects upon the negative reactions she received from others as a child and how they’ve shaped her life.

“I think that with a lot of the things I experienced, I didn’t really recognize that they were things that shouldn’t be happening until I was older. Now that I’m in high school, I see that Indian culture isn’t something that I should have ever been ashamed to be a part of. I was nine years old so I don’t blame myself,” Mehta said. “But I feel guilty because my culture is really important to me. I regret not learning Hindi fluently and not embracing my culture when I was young since it was so easy to be immersed in it.”

Judgment from peers can lead to minorities feeling as if they must distance themselves from their culture in order to fit in. Although the U.S. is where people often come to find a better life, many find that they lose a part of their heritage in the process. Mehta addressed this while talking about her life as a daughter of immigrants.

“It’s very easy to feel like you’re being stripped of your culture in a way because you grew up in America,” Mehta said. “As much as your parents do to raise you in a very culturally embedded way, where you went to school, it’s very American. All your teachers are American, and your name is going to be mispronounced because people are just going to say it like an American.”

However, not all hope is lost. Even though one cannot fully understand experiences one hasn’t lived through, Mehta believes that people can still raise awareness about cultural differences and respect them.

“As much as people who aren’t marginalized want to understand, I do think that they kind of can’t because it’s something that comes from growing up with a culturally different background,” Mehta said. “But we can reach that middle ground of being able to celebrate diversity without having to speak over other people and make it sound like we’re making diversity ‘digestible’ to a white American.”

Anjali mehta

Gregory Fung, a physics and AP physics teacher at Carlmont, was born in America to a family that immigrated from China. He describes their experiences in hiding their Asian American culture to fit in, an experience that many immigrants are forced to face even in modern society.

“Both my parents were really taught to assimilate, which I think was the typical Chinese American experience, at least for my generation and my parents’ generation,” Fung said. “So my parents never spoke Chinese at home, even though they could, and my grandparents always did. My parents really tried to be Western, and I mean that was what they needed to do to get by and to be successful.”

Fung addresses this type of quiet assimilation, reflecting on how it’s expected and even arguably forced upon immigrants by American culture.

“I wasn’t taught Chinese, and I never heard people speak Chinese. In some ways, you could claim that I was deprived of my heritage. I don’t think it’s that simple, but I definitely wish I had more of it,” Fung said. “In some ways, I feel lacking as an Asian American because I don’t have it, and the reason I don’t have it is because it was seen as bad to not be assimilated into Western American mainstream culture.”

Western mainstream culture is often defined by the media, where Asian representation has always been a problem. This can lead to Asian immigrants being unable to connect with characters, fueling the sense of being foreign or an outsider.

“There was like one Asian person on TV who was the chef from the TV show The Happenings, and Bruce Lee was in the media too, but beyond those two, that was it. And they were oriental, different, exotic, far off. The term oriental implies that you’re unusual and not one of us,” Fung said. “That was definitely what I believed about being of Chinese ancestry when I was younger. I wanted to fit in, and in high school, everyone did.”

“Fitting in” has become a common theme, whether one is a first or secondgeneration immigrant. Fung compared the experiences of his childhood to now, noting that views towards the immigrant experience and the idea of a “melting pot” have evolved over time.

“Growing up, there was definitely that element of, ‘you need to be an American.’ The term ‘melting pot’ is still used today, but it’s now considered to be a negative term. It implies that you come to America, and then everybody kind of mixes together, making everyone the same. But, when I was a kid, that was definitely seen as positive; we wanted to be the same,” Fung said.

Despite touting its tolerance and acceptance of diversity, American society often falls short of this dream. Fung expanded on this idea, pointing out that although society is progressive, people still see racism in our country today.

“As a society, we have a mistaken belief that we accept everyone, but the reality is that we still see prejudice,” Fung said. “I think it was hard for my parents as minorities, harder than it is today, but it’s still not easy to be Asian. I mean, especially today and literally this year.”

Fung referred to the recent hate crimes against Asians happening across the U.S. Although these attacks have been happening for a long time, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a surge. The nonprofit organization Stop Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Hate revealed that nearly 3,800 incidents of hate crimes against Asians were reported over the course of a year.

And those were just the ones reported. Imagine how many victims stay quiet due to fear or shame. Think about how many Asians are bullied into silence just because of their race.

“It’s one thing to just hear about crimes like the Atlanta shooting; it’s another to read what the perpetrator said. I think hearing what they said makes them more real like this is what made them attack the victims. Otherwise it’s not specific enough. I think people don’t really realize what the problem is with these hate crimes,” Fung said.

Although racism and discrimination persist in society, respecting, not just highlighting, marginalized cultures is an important first step to finding acceptance for all.

“People are so hesitant to celebrate culture because they don’t understand. They’re like ‘I can’t speak your language,’ but they don’t have to understand, they just have to be like, ‘Oh that’s beautiful, you have a culture, great,’” Mehta said. “People just need to let go of this idea that they have to understand everything and everyone else’s lives and accept that people are different in other cultures and that’s fine.”