2018-2019 AACC 295 Magazine Issue II

295 No II The Expectations Issue

295 magazine no. ii the expectations issue

asian american cultural center at yale new haven, ct

spring 2019

295 magazine no. ii the expectations issue special

thanks

Dean Yee & Franklin …

Haewon …

to

Sheraz College Ma

production

team

Katharine …

Li Ryan …

Tsedevsuren Vicky …

Wu e

d

Kevin Agnes Michelle Christina Eileen Herman Minh Vanessa

i

t

…

o

r

s

Chen …

Enkhtamir …

Fang …

Hijiya …

Huang …

Peng …

Vu …

Zhang

For AASA’s Fifthieth.

Pass this spirit on.

46 59 29 1 Composing a Fledgling Korean-American Voice Peter Shin

Chopsticks: A Bridge Between Two Cultures Grace Jin

Table 65 49 Familiarity Khue Tran

Autobiographical Piece Kevin Chen

Poems Allison Chen

Fermented Pride Elijah Hong

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Open Your Eyes Rosa Chang

18 53

Conte Mother Tongue Ellen Yang

Slow Thinking: Why Pre-Med? Cathy Duong

5

On Longing Janis Jin

0

Dear Reader Ryan, Vicky, and Katharine

e25 8 of 34

A Collection of Photos Edi Dai

Namelessly Kathy Min

71 70

Motherboard Elijah Hong

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My Dear Friend, Yung Wing Vanessa Zhang

ents Cho Bà Ngoại: For Granny Peter Tran

Untitled Tien Tran

40 Photos Darius Jing

Dear

Reader,

295 was the fruit of a collaborative effort between the Asian American Cultural Center at Yale and the Yale Asian Womyn’s Alliance. The magazine’s founders sought to engage in the tradition of collegiate literary magazines that have archived Asian American experiences dating back to the mid-1900s.

Now in its second year, 295 continues to be an expressive platform for the Asian American community at Yale. We feel honored to have had the profound privilege and responsibility of carrying on and expanding this tradition during this past year.

We hope this torch has provided some light into the world. Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Asian American Students Alliance, we pass this torch on to you.

Love, Ryan, Vicky, Katharine

&

1. POEMS

ALLISON CHEN

old times

originally published in The Yale Globalist

powdered rust embracing metal gates

dad stood, once again, on musk-slicked floors

he recalls seven siblings

sweat-stained backs in chinese school uniforms sour lychee palmed from nainai ’s hand

we were farmers he said to me

and i am not ashamed he said to me

he was crumbled walls in his old house

jagged clotheslines slashing buildings

the beating stick for wayward children we slept on wooden pads

aching from the pinkness of mosquito bites

i miss the roughness in my hands

In Her Arms

Lights streaming amber like fish in Dark polluted sea—viscous

Air holds my skin like an

Invisible lover—

Cigarette smoke sweetly caresses

Its hands over my body—She,

She is both paramour and mother-goddess

Standing under her ancient, blotted stars Her pearl river and eternal red

Told me, 你是我的

And I am yours

When I stood atop a bridge of concrete

Palms sticky from metalled sweat

Eyes burning from screechy lights

亲爱的

You are not a stranger.

Escaping the Sunrise

originally published in The Yale Herald

When scarlet streamed past clouded skies

We looked in awe, not daring to breathe—disbelief In our white-lipped mouths, when

The chain-link fence rose and unwanted Men’s fingers wandered closer Our bodies no longer ours

When this is not your home

When baba says he has no daughters We marched Cried Sang

Against the scarlet sky

Speckled with lemon stars.

The sun rose.

5 ON LONGING JANIS JIN I

’ve only been to Korea once, when I was young, maybe ten or eleven. I don’t remember anything about it except that we went to an amusement park called Lotte World, where my dad and I took a lot of selfies on our new iPad while waiting in line for rides.

I can’t find those photos anywhere now. One of us broke the iPad a few years later, so they are probably lost somewhere in cyberspace.

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This disappoints me because, like everyone else in the digital age, I have become accustomed to remembering my life through photographs. Last year, around the same time I decided I was a lesbian, I chopped off all my hair.

Sometimes when I have trouble falling asleep, I scroll through my phone and look at old photos of myself from when I had long hair. Not because I miss having long hair, but because the idea that I once looked like that feels so foreign to me that I find some odd fascination in being confronted with, as Roland Barthes says of the photograph, “a certainty that such a thing had existed.”

I thought a lot about Barthes recently when I went to see Do Ho Suh’s The Perfect Home II at the Brooklyn Museum. They let you walk through the installation on weekends, and so I waited in line on a Sunday for 45 minutes to go inside. Made entirely of hand-sewn translucent fabric, the work is a full scale replica of the first apartment Suh moved to in New York after completing his MFA at Yale in 1997.

Suh’s piece reminded me of how Barthes describes a Charles Clifford photograph of a house—“Alhambra”— in Camera Lucida. While looking at the photograph, Barthes is overcome by the uncanny feeling that he has been there before.

He describes what he calls a “longing to inhabit” the

photograph: “it is fantasmatic, deriving from a kind of second sight which seems to bear me forward to a utopian time, or carry me back to somewhere in myself… it is as if I were certain of having been there or of going there.”

The Perfect Home II strikes me as being about this kind of longing to inhabit. Walking through this structure, a memory of Suh’s former home, I could not help but feel profoundly sad. Melancholia permeates the work’s formal qualities; the experience of being surrounded entirely by translucent fabric is ethereal, ghostly, haunting. I felt as if the walls would collapse around me if I even breathed too loudly. The work is a structure of feeling, in the most literal sense: systematic, atmospheric, everywhere and nowhere all at once.

Though Suh came up with the idea for this piece while he was still living in the apartment, the project didn’t become possible until 2016, when his landlord passed away and Suh was forced to vacate the space. After moving all of his belongings out of the apartment, Suh began the long, painstaking process of what he has called “rubbing/loving”: rubbing every surface of the apartment with first with colored pencil, then with pastel, and finally with his fingers. “I literally had to caress every surface with my fingertips, and I started to wear off my fingertips,” he describes.

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“I was actually giving up my own body to the architecture.”

has loved and labored for so deeply. I want to tell him: it loves you back. Of course, it is imposThe affection of Suh’s labor is sible to know. Maybe somebody rendered visible in the work’s else lives there now, maybe detail; it is in the jaggedness of the it has undergone reconstruction, edges, the slight variations in line maybe it has been demolished lengths, the movement of and replaced with a luxury apartSuh’s hand, where the work tremment building or a new coffee bles most with longing. One canshop. Either way, even if it does not help but see him bent “love” him, Suh’s longing—to (re) over an electrical socket, rubbing inhabit this space the way he has his fingers over the holes, trying remembered it—is impossible. desperately to engrain the memory of his home into his body.

I cried as I walked through his work; probably because Suh too is Desperation is what sticks with Korean, this work enacted for me the most about this work. I feel me a very Korean and diasporic this desperation often about kind of longing, a longing to inhabit my girlfriend. Sometimes we play that particular “home” where a game where I rub my nose I cannot really be certain of having furiously all over her body, from been, but nevertheless feel as if her ears down to her ankles.

I were certain of having been there In this scenario, I am a puppy (she or of going there. I am not naive loves puppies), and the game ends enough to believe anymore that with her laughing hysterically Korea “loves me back”; diaspora’s and me lying on top of her, fully inevitable wound is, of course, out of breath. It is a sweet, estrangement. But Korea remains silly game. I often hope that if I that place I long desperately and rub hard enough, maybe her body impossibly to inhabit, that place I will press itself into my nose cannot help but return to when and leave a mark of some sort— I inhabit Do Ho Suh’s recreation of a crease, a bump, an indentation, his former home. anything. The game, for me, is also a (failed) wish: that when my To long for something is to love memory cannot conjure her touch, knowing you will receive nothing perhaps my body will. This is in return. In this way, I think the despair of memory: we want it longing’s impossibility is what to leave a mark of certainty. But makes it the deepest kind of it rarely does. love. This is a masochist vision, perhaps. But in the face of We long for lost things because impossibility, it feels good, I think, they are now out of our reach. to love by longing for somewhere I feel sad that Do Ho Suh will never or someone at all. be able to return to this home he

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Motherboard

Elijah Hong “T

his is my son’s favorite part.” Like a bowling ball, the airplane accelerated down the runway, shaking with the terrible likeness of a school bus.

I have always hated airplanes, yet it’s incredible to think how any vehicle burdened by the weight of that much machinery and people can soar above the clouds with ease. I looked out the window and watched the flimsy wings warp up and down, wiggling with frightening flexibility under the force of the winds. I felt the air outside usher the cabin of the plane in different directions, like a waved hand does for a fly. As we rose higher, the west coast fog enveloped the wing of the plane, shooting past the outline of the fuselage like streamers.

The Sunkist sun painted the Sierra

Nevada in a tangerine orange.

It stuck to the middle of the sky like a hard candy sucked on and forgotten. The horizon, where the two colors coalesced, looked like a ribbon of fruit-by-the-foot also epoxied to the sky by sugar and saliva. “I defend my proposal in November.” The woman behind me continued. “I really should start working on it now…There’s just no time, you know?”

The other cooed in agreement. “When is there ever time?

Dissertations are impossible.”

Somewhere in the cabin a baby began to cry. It was harder to hear through the jets and babies, but they then started discussing data sets and systems management and digital learning and various other

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topics. I didn’t understand any of “If a lane in the highway is closed it but listening to them reminded or if an exit ramp is blocked, me of my own mother. She always then the information can’t get to wanted to pursue her doctorate, point B.” And so on. Somehow, but she’s never had time between she’ll segue from my homework her jobs, household, and five devtroubles to a discussion about ilish children. Her most recent job Net Neutrality and internet equalwas as a Healthcare Data Analyst ity. I wouldn’t be able to access at Vanderbilt University, but what my calculus assignment, but that meant, none of the Hong’s I could explain how big business really knew. is ruining the internet. This exact dialogue is such a common inter“So…When people get sick, they action in the Hong household go to the hospital…” She would that we hardly ever asked her about start whenever prompted about the internet anymore—much to her job. “And when they get sick, her disappointment. the doctor takes measurements on them.” For anyone not experiShe graduated MIT class of ’88 enced in healthcare data science, with a BS in Electrical Engineering her explanation made sense up and Computer Science, and truly, until that point. “Then we input there’s no other area of study all that information into the mainnor university more appropriate for frame where we…” And if you her. Her robotic emotive expresdidn’t know better, you would sion, analytical disposition, and think she was avoiding the quespainstakingly detail-oriented work tion or maybe even being conethic are comparable to that of the descending, but in reality, those computers she works with. Hardly rudimentary types of responses ever does she express internal are just products of her intensely feelings: frustration, anger, and thorough personality. sadness are emotions reserved for the less powerful personal “Mom! Do you know why the computers, not her supercomputinternet’s not working? I can’t do ing self. She’s a machine, so she my homework.” doesn’t need the humanly comforts of feeling— provided her task “The internet is like a highway.” at hand doesn’t require it. After “No. Mom. I just need to—” college, she promptly landed a job as a software engineer during “Each car is like a unit of informaa time when software engineers tion, trying to get from point A to were almost exclusively male and point B.” white. Male and white software engineers are, as a result, one of “Mom…please.” few known details about my mother’s professional life.

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“How was work?”

as she would a computer code.

“Hello? Do you speak English?”

“It was good. My boss is annoying. My mother just smiled and nodHe keeps telling me how to do ded—a skill she’s been terribly my job.” unsuccessful in teaching her children. She smiled and nodded “So, he mansplained you?” and told the waiter she wanted a “What’s mansplained? No, he’s just Rueben Sandwich—because a boy—he’s like 30.” that’s her favorite type of sandwich.

She then looked at me curious “Mansplaining is when a guy about what I was going to order, talks at you about something you acting as if nothing had happened. already know.”

I didn’t smile, and I didn’t nod, but I ordered the cheapest thing on “Oh no, he just thinks I don’t the menu knowing my mother know anything.” would still give a fifteen-percent tip.

Despite working against the patriShe doesn’t speak out in instances archy her entire life, she rarely like these for the same reasons exhibits any signs of fatigue. “I’m why she’s not a feminist. My sisters not a feminist.” She reminds us. retell me a story (of before I was “I’m just doing my job.” She hates born) when she bought herself when people underestimate her, and my dad matching Christmas and she hates it even more when sweaters. her expectations are less than everyone else’s. As a result, she “This is the ugliest fucking has an ironic bias against femisweater.” My dad lifted up a navynism. She doesn’t need any man’s blue crewneck with white snowslack for her to succeed in society, flakes knit into the front and back. and she doesn’t need any man telling her what she can and can“Don’t talk like that. This is what not do. To her, she’s not living in American people do.” She lifted up a man’s world, because that would her own out of the bag. Hers was a mean she is not in control of her red sweater with white snowflakes. own life. The only expectations “Do what?” and limitations that matter to her are those she sets for herself—that “Wear matching Christmas sweatis what she sees as her job. I’ve ers.” She said matter-of-factly. witnessed her “just doing her job” on countless occasions.

“I grew up in America! You grew up in America! Americans don’t “What would you like?” The waiter do this!” asked. My mom looked down at the menu, processing each charac- “Please just take the picture.” ter with equal consideration, just

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To this day, she still defends the sweaters. “I have no idea what you’re talking about—they’re not ugly.” She couldn’t find the pictures or the sweaters, but she vouched for them anyways. “They’re Christmas colors: red, blue, and white.” I told her Christmas colors are red and green; plus, she got the order wrong: it’s red, white, and blue.

She laughed but stood by her statement nonetheless. I guess she’s partially correct. Christmas is quite American, but I still think she’s mistaking colors and sweaters for a much more complex definition of nationality.

To her, an American would buy their husband matching Christmas sweaters—no matter how ugly.

But to her, an American would also never criticize the patriarchal structure of our god-fearing country, nor speak out against a restaurant waiter’s aggressive microaggressions. Maybe she’s right in that ugly Christmas sweaters are a uniquely American experience, but I still think she’s a feminist and an American. Besides, for a self-proclaimed non-feminist, she’s raised four of the most radical feminists and outspoken anti-racists I know.

Discrepancies in her behavior like these remind me that she’s still a human. She may act like a computer, but I know that emotions are what drive her actions—not a motherboard. Would a computer, for instance, name “White Chicks” as its favorite movie? Most of my

friends are dismayed that I would ever watch such a crass film with my mother, but it’s she who loves the movie. There’s one scene in particular where one of the main male detectives—while incognito as a blonde, white girl—goes on a date with a machismo millionaire played by Terry Crews. Every time my mom watches this scene, her uncontrollable laughter can be heard all across the house. As the rest of the family revels in her hysteria, we also wonder in what constrained cavity of our mother’s mind does this side of her remain locked up?

The problem with viewing her as a perfect machine is that we take advantage of people we don’t consider human, even if said opinions are positive. For example, I don’t think twice when I overheat my laptop with thirty-seven opened tabs, eight active applications, and frustration induced keyboard smashing. Likewise, I don’t consider how overwhelmed my mom might feel when I prompt her with numerous tasks like cooking dinner and scheduling my flight home or when I translate my stress over to her by telling her my academic woes. She can’t support my weight forever. She, after all, still needs to get her PhD. The plane began its landing on the Baltimore tarmac. Again, the airplane felt as if it were being thrown back and forth by the stubborn winds. The tiny landing wheels touched down but only

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briefly before bouncing back into the air. Landing is always the scariest part for me because I can’t imagine such a mammoth vehicle being supported by those disproportionate wheels. The second touchdown was more abrupt, and the plane stayed on the ground.

From there, we pulled up to the gate without incident. “Good luck on your dissertation!” One of the ladies said. The other picks up her child as she steps into the isle, making sure to absorb the shock of each step so not to wake the baby.

“Thanks! I’ll need it.”

My Dear Friend, Yung Wing Vanessa Zhang I

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n a personal notebook from 1904, Mark Twain considers the state of American politics and writes: “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).” Considering colleges during application season during my senior fall, I kept this sentiment in mind as I carefully selected schools for their social justice initiatives and how far student perspectives could be from the majority. Within Yale, with its students’ bi-weekly protests against perceived anti-blackness on campus and Title IX discrimination, I thought that I had found my place to be. On the first day of my freshman year, the courtyard of Vanderbilt Hall—lit by the sun and the many friendly faces of every shade of brown—perfectly embodied Yale’s idealism of diversity

that I had envisioned. Flowers decorated the center of the courtyard, their colors mirroring the vibrancy of the posters lining the area, boasting diversity in thought, action, and progress.

Among many of Mark Twain’s acquaintances was Joseph Hopkins Twichell. The Reverend served as a closed confidante and personal religious advisor to Twain for over forty years. Twichell was a Yale man of 1859, and a lifelong advocate for abolitionism and social rights, enlisting in the Union Army a few weeks after the war broke out.

This connection to the sociallyminded and leftist part of American history was exactly what I found so fascinating about Yale, and its culture of diversity.

Reverend Twichell, one of the many Yale men who donated decades of personal effects to the university to serve as historical record, left behind a thin leather-bound journal. Its binding was a bit decayed, suffering from the disease of time, and “Trip to Peru, 1874” was engraved in gold along the spine. I read through tens of messily written, eggshell colored pages hoping to find something about his connection to Mark Twain, but instead I found the far more interesting chronicle of his friendship with Yung Wing, the first Chinese student to graduate from an American university, Yale man of 1854.

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And thus, I become acquaintances with Yung Wing. After receiving a degree from Yale College, he later

returned to China, where he became a successful tea merchant, interpreter and assistant to foreign missionaries.

Most importantly, he organized the Chinese Educational Mission, which sent hundreds of Chinese students to the U.S. during the 19th century for an American education.

This paved the way for hundreds of thousands of Chinese immigrants succeeding him, all of them hopeful and seeking the binational and bicultural experience that Yung laid before them.

Perhaps even more important than all of these illustrious intergovernmental achievements were his friendships with his contemporaries.

Yung may have been the first individual of Asian descent that many of his classmates and future colleagues had ever interacted with. Along with the journal encapsulating their volunteer trip to Peru, I discovered some correspondences between Yung and Twichell dated in the 1870s.

Though they were close friends, I immediately noticed a stark discrepancy in their writings to each other, specifically in their greetings.

Yung committed to beginning each of his letters with, ‘To my dear friend,’ courteous and kind, while Twichell invariably wrote a simple, ‘Wing,” to begin each of his responses.

Why did Yung humble himself in such a way? Not because of cultural differences—he embodied the same American values as Twichell.

He was also older than Twichell by almost a decade, and his role in overseeing many interactions between

China and the United States undeniably put him in the higher position of power. In China, Yung would be referred to as 年纪大，地位高.1 But, maybe that’s it. They weren’t in China, they existed in mid-1800s America. And maybe between the two of them, Yung’s skin color added a different dimension to their relationship, one that couldn’t be quantified by age or career, but by the legacies of social stratification.

Perhaps Twichell wasn’t the activist he had claimed to be.

not be allowed to return to the United States. Through the help of friends, Wing was able to sneak back into the country in time to see his youngest son, Bartlett, graduate from Yale, but lived his remaining years in Hartford, consumed by poverty and obscurity. In a spur of xenophobic fear, America, and Yale, had failed him—the Yale that refused to help Wing when he needed it most, and the Yale that continues to disregard his life’s achievements felt foreign to me.

And then I realized. I had never heard of Yung Wing, of his importance in Yale and American history, or of his influence on the early integration of American schools, before this discovery. Late into spring semester of my first year at Yale, as I weaved in and out of the rooms of the Asian American Cultural Center, I finally realized that one of the small rooms in the building bore his name: the Yung Wing living room. I felt heat rush to my cheeks as I realized that his decades of work, and his initiatives to bring diversity to American schools, had culminated in totality to a trivial dedication hung near a sparse room and far away from the center of campus.

His name on that small room in the AACC encouraged me to begin thinking more deeply about spaces.

The distinct experience of being the only Asian American woman in a class, something I had never experienced in high school, suddenly stood out to me, and I wondered if all the professors who encouraged me to escape my “shy shell” were speaking to me, or to the mold of the quiet, passive Asian girl.

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Near the end of his life, Yung wished to return to Connecticut after years of working in central Chinese government. Instead, he was informed that his citizenship, which he had held for over fifty years, had been revoked and that he would 1

My residential suite of four Asian American girls suddenly felt purposeful—or ignorant? I wondered if the Yale administrators felt that we needed to be with each other, to find solace in our living space in a university that often forgets about Asian American experiences.

Or perhaps, they hadn’t even realized the peculiarity of the suite because Asian experiences are so often lumped together with white ones, and there wouldn’t be anything strange about four white students living together.

Niánjì dà, dìwèi gāo - ‘Older age, higher social status’: Mandarin Chinese saying for those who deserve the highest respect

As I sought more fragments of Yung Wing on campus, I found that Yale had a portrait of him commissioned almost a decade ago.

Enthusiastic at this sign of representation, I immediately booked an appointment to view it at the Yale in China building, where it was shelved away in storage. I was confused, at first. I didn’t realize the portrait was supposed to be of him. The man in the painting has a narrow nose, pointed at the tip.

His hairline is receding and his eyes deep-set. Nothing except for his skin, painted a distinct yellow tone, and his pitch black hair reminded me of men from my cultural community.

The two men working at the building stood in front of me, each adjacent to the portrait, one Asian and one white. They made Yung lose his heritage; he looked infinitely more similar to the white man standing to his right than the Asian man to his left.

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Sitting in the courtyard of Vandy, at Yale, in what I realize is a white-dominated space, I feel more strongly about diversity than I ever did before. Beyond thinking about my personal experiences, Yung Wing has helped to widen my perspective on what it means to be Asian American, and what it means to be Asian American at Yale. Because I came from such an Asian-saturated community, I tended to dismiss Asian Americans in the narrative of diversity. My idealized vision of Yale and its promised diversity has possibly faltered in the face of Yung Wing’s erasure in university history, but it is also a call for me to be a voice in expressing the importance of Asian American experiences within a campus that so often forgets about the community and its needs.

As I continue to figure out my place within this institution, I’m glad to rely on “My dear friend,” Yung Wing.

17 Open Your Eyes Rosa Chang

Mother Ellen Yan

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Tongue ng “A

i yah, Jiayu.” Mom takes off her wire-rimmed glasses.

She uses my Chinese name not as a threat, but out of frustration. Dad flips through another failed test, my chicken-scratch characters covered with red marks.

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I shrug. “I’m sorry. I’m trying,” I say, but we all know I don’t mean it. My feet swing back and forth in this toobig chair.

The children of immigrants, we are too young to be aware of the sacrifices that allow us to sit here in this bare classroom, too naïve to recognize the privilege of living in the doldrums of American suburbia. Some more diligently than others, we recite vertically-written sentences from the whiteboards, copy characters on worksheets, and learn the difference between ma (horse) and ma (mother) and ma (anger). I spend my time staring at the popcorn ceiling and stubbornly refusing to participate. I read at an eighth grade level in English but a kindergartener’s level in Mandarin. For all my precociousness in “regular” school— I willingly drill myself on multiplication tables and spelling lists—I won’t muster the discipline to practice my Chinese flashcards.

Some people have church. My Sundays are spent in Chinese language classes at the community center.

It’s unclear what the origin story is of this modest community of Taiwanese transplants in upstate New York, how multiple people born on a subtropical island made their way to the snowy avenues of Albany. But somehow there are enough families to warrant “Do you want to drop out?” I stay these classes, a weekly attempt to hold silent. Selfishly, I do. I don’t want this onto the culture they left behind. responsibility. I don’t want to bear the

weight of the label “Asian-American.” places like the freaking fifth grade I want an unhyphenated identity, to student council. just be American.

At recess, my classmates treat me Mom halfheartedly sends me to my like an oracle, a human encyclopedia room, buying time to figure out her willing and able to answer their burnnext steps. Instead, I perch next to the ing questions about all things Asian. railing, listening to the bits of conver- They’re fascinated by the so-called sation that float upstairs.

Orient and my apparent connection to it, despite my being born and raised “She’ll thank us later. Are you really in Clifton Park my whole life. No going to let her give up this easily?” one stops to ask if I want to be their Dad presses.

Yellow Ambassador, not that I think “She has to want it. I don’t know how I have a choice. I field questions like Can you teach us swear words in Chinese, to make her want it,” Mom replies. and Do you know any karate, and Do Their conversation gets quieter. I hear you really eat dogs? (Even if I knew whispers of questions that neither of Chinese swears, I’m far too straightthem have answers to: do we push her laced to go around flaunting such harder, is this just the cost of leaving knowledge). They’re awkward at best home? Finally, Dad cedes the battle. I and frankly racist at their worst, but don’t return to the community center always so very clueless to the offense. the next Sunday.

We’re all just on the cusp of twelve, but they get the freedom of remaining Slowly, Chinese falls away from my oblivious to the ways our lives are so life. At home, Mom and Dad ask me inherently different. questions in Chinese and I respond in English. Eventually, they just ask in One time during social studies, Erin English. The only indications of the Bush told me I “wasn’t like other motherland lie in the lucky red scroll Asians.” I didn’t know her reasoning on the door and my own reflection. for such a claim or whether she had even ever interacted with another ** * Asian person, but it felt like a comI lose the election for fifth grade stu- pliment. In lieu of Chinese school, I dent council representative to Emily fill my time studying how to be like Fielding. She’s a formidable oppo- the Erin Bushes of the world. They nent—the teachers and boys alike don’t realize the blissful privilege in fawn over how “sweet” she is with being ordinary. Ordinary is an insult her blonde ponytail and pink lunch- to those chasing gold stars. The feelbox. We were tied, but then she voted ing of otherness that permeates my for herself and I didn’t realize I was mind is noticeably absent in those allowed to do that. I wonder what girls. They define the lingo of norit would be like to have that convic- malcy that I constantly worry about tion in my right to take up space in

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keeping up with. I’m not even striving for popularity, just acceptance.

but it wouldn’t be worth it to point that out even if I knew how to in the right language. Dad gives us an approving From observation, I learn which thumbs up from across the table. After Disney Channel celebrities to have drilling my pronunciation of one line crushes on (Dylan, not Cole Sprouse). for fifteen minutes, I have successfully For lunch, I stop bringing pork buns executed my mission: wishing my from home and instead buy ham and grandparents a happy Lunar New Year.

Swiss on white (no crust). I think if I imitate them enough that they’ll They try asking more questions, not forget how I can never really be one realizing that I have no idea what of them. The ease with which they they’re saying. Really, we all mostly move through the world is an inimita- just smile and nod because we don’t ble confidence that I don’t know how how to understand each other, what to emulate. with their failing hearing and my lack of fluency. Sarah, in true eldest sibling Later that year, Mom brought a tray fashion, jumps in to fill in the silences of homemade dumplings to the PTA until Mom and Dad commandeer the barbeque. Surprisingly, everyone eats call. Watching them talk to their own them quickly and happily. Nobody parents—people they haven’t seen asks if they contain dog meat. Mom face-to-face in years—they seem so is occupied with small talk. I see Mrs. much more comfortable. They crack Halliday touch her shoulder and say, jokes and laugh in a way that only “Your English is excellent! I don’t even happened when the burden of English hear an accent!” Mom crosses her arms. is lifted.

Surely Mrs. Halliday doesn’t realize that she’s speaking to the graduate of Later, I ask Mom whether she thinks Taiwan’s most prestigious university, a in English or Chinese. She pauses. woman with an American PhD and “Chinese mostly. But more and more, who has endured challenges harder English. Sometimes it takes me a minthan this clueless trophy wife in front ute to remember the Chinese translaof her could imagine. Coolly, all Mom tion for words I learned in English.” replies with is “Thank you.”

I wonder if this is the promise of the ** * American Dream, or at least the one that I’ve bought into. With enough “Ah Gong, Ah Ma, xin nian kuai le!” hard work, you might be able to conSarah and I shout in unison, waving at vince the “true” Americans that you’re the smiling faces of our grandparents no different. If you succeed at matchon the desktop. ing their words and appearance and In response, they say something that I attitudes, then they will ignore that think means I look taller. That claim you aren’t supposed to belong. Total seems unfounded since the webcam assimilation is the endgame. But in only captures from my shoulders up, reality, they never forget that you will never truly be the same.

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** * My fifth date ever is at a Szechuan restaurant, certified “authentic” with four stars on Yelp. It was Kazemi’s suggestion—maybe so he could bring up his study abroad in Beijing again.

He’s half Japanese, half white, and yet a hundred percent more fluent in “my” language than I am. I neglect to mention that I’ve never ordered for myself at a Chinese restaurant without numbered entrees. It’s too early in our relationship to sit him down and say, “Allow me to explain my ongoing complex relationship with my Asian identity.” It’s easier to let him make his own assumptions, to let him fall in love with whichever perception of me he likes best.

care to know the history that has led him to now. I think about the dozens of cousins a hemisphere away who I’ve never met.

He pauses while calculating the tip to ask, with genuine curiosity, “Which Yang character is yours?” I take the pen from him to write my Chinese name, the only three characters I know how to write. But now, muscle memory fails me. I can’t remember my own name.

“I guess I forgot,” I say, the most honest thing I’ve said all night. Kaz takes the pen and starts to write out different characters to jog my memory. My mind is elsewhere.

Is this how centuries of Yang identity A golden cat statue swings its paw as are lost? In a Chinese restaurant in we enter. My own hand is interlaced New Haven, on a coast my ancestors with Kaz’s. The waiter sizes us up, never imagined to exist? A genealogy of dynastic princesses and Kuomintang then smiles at me directly: “Ji wei?” generals forgotten because of my selfI reply, “Two” at the same time that ishness in chasing what I thought it Kaz answers, “Liang wei.” The waiter meant to be American? is visibly thrown off that I am not the *** one to respond in Mandarin, that my pronunciation does not match my face, The monk locks Ah Ma’s ashes in the but leads us to our table anyway. I let family plot, next to Ah Gong. The Kaz order for us both, pretending to smothering humidity signals that the be fascinated with the ice cubes in my rainy season is in full swing in Taipei. glass when the waiter returns. Maybe This kind of heat doesn’t exist in New if I just avoid eye contact, we can all York. There are empty cabinets, the ignore that initial interaction. Over eventual final resting places for the mapo tofu and dan dan mian, we forge relatives that currently stand around connection over generic things that me. I don’t know their names, but start to feel special—a shared love of they’re dressed in the same scratchy OutKast, a mutual dislike of our cal- black robes as me (we even have culus professor. But he also talks with matching sweat stains, courtesy of the pride about his surname, about his Taiwanese sun). trips to Japan to visit his grandparents, about his samurai lineage. He’s taken I saw Dad cry for the first time that

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day. In the middle of his eulogy, his voice cracked and his shoulders shook, and all I could focus on was how I couldn’t understand a word. Everyone else cried because of the beauty of his words. I cried because the strongest man in my life was breaking down and I didn’t know what he was saying.

enlightenment or knowledge of a juicy secret (maybe those two are one and the same). My aunt is already praying again, whispering on a red worship cushion. I join her, my palms clasped around the incense sticks. I figure all-knowing divine beings are okay with me praying in English.

But it’s not so much a prayer as it is Old friends trade stories about Ah Ma, a meditation. remembering her as a feisty matriarch of an eight child household. Someone In the few days I’ve been in Taiwan, tells me (through Sarah as translator) I’ve been surrounded by more people that I have some of Ah Ma’s fire. I who look like me than ever before. It’s don’t know how I would ever believe not just my sprawling extended family, him. I don’t know my own grand- most of whom I’m seeing for the first mother’s story or even her name; how time in my adult life. Here, my face is can I be anything like her? I wonder normal. When I catch my own image if she dreamt of passing on her hard- in the window of a crowded subway won wisdom to her granddaughters, car, I don’t stick out. But my aunties only to be confronted with the reality are quick to point out that my clothes, of a language barrier. Did she blame my walk do not fit in. I carry myself me for the waning contact with our like an American and the locals can Taiwanese side? Do my other relatives tell without me opening my mouth. think that?

Asian-American. The hyphen feels Mom wraps one arm around Sarah and heavier than ever before, but also the the other around me, pulling us tight. only part of that identity that feels She can’t rest her chin on me anymore accurate. I don’t have a true claim to now that I come up to her nose. She either “Asian” or “American”; I never tells me that we pray so that Ah Ma will. In Taiwan, I am an illiterate can safely cross over into her next life. fraud. I am a stranger to my family, a I think about my own confused chant- product of diaspora who rejected her ing during the service—really just lip history and is only now understandsynching in the back row, trying to ing the gravity of that decision. In blend into the atonal chorus. I hope America, I passively allow the expecthe deities don’t hold my butchered tations of others to bend me into the prayers against my grandmother. shape they want. I question if there is anything about me that is decided A two-story golden Buddha, cross- of my own will. So long as I look legged with lotus hands, meets my the way I do, I will never be able to gaze across the temple. Offerings of be solely American. I am trapped in flowers and oranges and rice crackers the threshold between worlds. I hope lay by his feet, not meant for mor- one day I will find the balance. But I tal consumption. His smile suggests

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am burdened with the thought that out loud in some time. He takes a maybe I never will. Perhaps there is moment to ponder this, then smiles no way to find peace within this space. and says something to my mother.

She bows her head in response.

And I start to cry again, here on this cracked red cushion in the presence Mom clarifies to me that he compliof the Buddha. His knowing smile mented my name, that he appreciated hasn’t moved an inch. Burnt chunks the thought that went into its choosof incense have fallen on the carpet. ing. My parents spent months choosI stand and place the stubs of the ing the characters, all their hopes for sticks among dozens of others in the me wrapped up in each stroke. I realpot. How many others have cried here, ize I don’t even know what my name under the watch of the divine? means. She explains.

I end my meditation and meet my mother talking to one of the monks.

He writes me a blessing on rice paper, stamps it with red ink, and asks for my name.

“Well, Yang is our surname—you knew that. Yu is to nurture. We chose that so you would cultivate kindness and thoughtfulness.” I ask about the Jia.

“Yang Jiayu,” I say. The syllables feel familiar, though I haven’t said them

She smiles. “It means family.”

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25 Namelessly Kathy

“G

Min

reat response. It’s Kathy, right?” my professor commented to the girl three seats to my left. I frowned. Of course, this was nothing new, white teachers confusing me with the other Asian girl in the classroom. Together, we sat in the basement of Yale University’s Beinecke Library for our quasi-spiritual, fully pretentious class that adamantly refused to name its teachings as a smorgasbord of world religions and philosophies, despite offering a smorgasbord curriculum of world religions and philosophies. I suppose I was quite used to being mistaken for Ashley Xu and Megan Wong, and I’m sure this other girl could only muster the vaguest of annoyance at being rechristened Kathy Min.

Of course, it is always accompanied

by an apologetic smile: “I’m so bad at remembering names!” On the other hand, I am not one to forget names, so it is perhaps doubly insulting to have my name disregarded by these self-proclaimed name-forgetters whose names have long been etched in my memory. I often long to be as forgetful as the thoughtless intellectuals that surround me, wishing names and identities could just as easily slip my mind. But I am famously awesome at holding grudges, so my brain furiously archives every insult, microaggression, and distasteful interaction. (Incensed at his teenage immaturity, I once refused to speak to my older brother for a month.)

The Beinecke had the blank, white scent of fastidious sanitation, I thought, as I stared at what was probably a priceless piece of artwork laid carefully on the table in front of me.

It was something Buddhist or Tibetan, I think, with swirling ceruleans and oranges and mints and peaches arranged in hypnotic circles and presumably Buddhas perched in gentle prayer. I’m sorry to admit that I can’t tell you what the other girl’s name was, or even what she really looked like, except that she must have sort of looked like me in that she also had straight black hair. At my professor’s momentary loss of memory, I began to tune out the conversation. It was a disembodied experience, really, or what I hoped was disembodied. I wished I could will my being out of my body, because I hated the feeling of other people’s eyes turning towards me as they realized that I, in fact, was the

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real Kathy Min. It was all the wrong kind of attention, being known for one’s race.

I’m used to wearing my race like a badge, not by choice, but because I learned from a young age that my yellowness is an all-consuming thing, a wilting dandelion in the milky whiteness of Boise, Idaho, my overly suburban place of residence of the last eighteen years. I could forgive Idaho for its racial antipathies, but wasn’t this Yale? If only high school me could see me now, pink with humiliation in the indefatigable Beinecke Library. Isn’t it just a bit life-denying to be such an overachiever and have all your accomplishments overwritten with that nasty little sentiment, that all Asians look the same? But in a way, isn’t that my fault for drinking the punch?

They call it the model minority myth, after all.

As for my professor, was she really racist or just reasonably confused?

It was only the second day of class, after all. No matter. My resentful self spent the remainder of the seminar pouting with childish indignation. It would take a lot to redeem her in my mind. Sneering, I thought everything about my professor screamed wannabe ally. She wore blocky glasses and patterned blazers and she said not to be too alarmed if we saw her working out in Payne Whitney Gym, because professors were people too. But what else could I expect? This class was so Eat Pray Love; I assumed that risk in signing up for the class.

My professor started talking about Martin Luther King, Jr., and the

importance of racial equality and dignity for people of color, but, to me, she had been permanently pegged as a well-meaning but racially insensitive white lady. Her impassioned calls for racial justice rang hollow, a flashing of her allyship badge pinned crookedly atop her spiritually enlightened demeanor.

Maybe the blame for my professor’s forgetfulness lies, at least in part, with me. I am, after all, rather quiet and unassuming in my classroom presence. I don’t leave an impression, I guess. Although I think this is somewhat of a self-perpetuating cycle. I speak, if at all, in mousy, cautious syllables, because I have regarded my white classrooms and white teachers as unwelcoming, or, as they prefer to say, “forgetful.” Then, they forget me because I don’t speak up. And so on so forth, so who is to say who is at fault?

Chickens and eggs and all that.

But I don’t think all of my quietude is natural, and I would actually wager that much of my outward introversion is learned. People from both my life before and during Yale are surprised to learn that I competed in speech and debate throughout high school, and Model UN before that, and elementary school musicals before that. It still baffles me how much of myself I devoted to the activity of high school debate, but debate was an irresistible drug where the high was upstaging arrogant white boys from private schools. In all truth, I was quite the attention-seeking child. I loved—still do—the sound of my own voice, so silence is an uneasy antidote to the attention toward

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my phenotypes.

At times, though, I think I’m more of a natural introvert armed with the occasional bout of desire for recognition. I was always good at school— this I knew—so by high school, I resolved to make academic success my ticket to quiet stardom. Even though my school cared more about our losing football team than my debate trophies.

I wouldn’t be cool per se, but at least people could know me vaguely as that smart debate girl.

In my senior year of high school, I was riding all the highs that an overly ambitious student from a dinky high school in Boise, Idaho, could. I strutted across my school’s yellowing linoleum tiling with my Yale water bottle, and at some point, I became a bit of a celebrity among my peers after a local website published a piece featuring my accomplishments. At my school, this kind of ambition was more than rare. Most kids opted for small colleges in Idaho or Utah. In my family, we always joked that no one would read too much into the giant Y emblazoned on my Yale merchandise, because people would just assume the Y was for the big-name school in our area—Brigham Young University.

All this is to say, I thought very highly of myself at age eighteen, and so my arrogance could only be matched by fury when my high school career counselor mixed up my name with the one other Asian girl in my class.

I knew that class sizes were large in my public school, but was that really an excuse? Didn’t I elevate the prestige of my otherwise-unimpressive high

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school, made up of stoners, weeaboos, and Mormons who stayed within the borders of Mormon country (unless to go on a mission, which is a whole different story)? As a high-achieving student, shouldn’t I at least warrant the respect of having my name known by a counseling department motivated by the express goal of student achievement? And besides, the other Asian girl’s hair was a different color than mine—hers a dyed reddish-brown, mine a brittle black color—so if all Asian faces looked the same, couldn’t our hair at the very least be an easy way to tell us apart?

can weigh on one’s psyche long after the fact.

“It’s Kathy.”

Like I said, don’t drink the model minority punch.

My professor’s face contorts with surprise. “I know.”

In the fluorescent underbelly of the Beinecke, my eyes glued to the little indigo buns atop the Buddhas, another memory surfaces. I am eighteen again, starry-eyed about my first semester at Yale, and tired of trying to stand out. I am in another Yale classroom, this one as drafty as the Beinecke, and my professor. I raise my hand to speak, and she nods at me. She doesn’t say my name, but it is early in the semester, so I think I could help her out.

These days, I often think about the And I feel all eyes on me, that creepanchors of my Asian-ness, how slight ing invasiveness of pupils on skin, but assaults like the botching of a name this time, the stares are because of the words I have said.

Familiarity Khue Tran T

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ime seemed to move in slow motion as the announcer spoke my name. The gravity of the honor spread across the football field and dispersed not only through space, but time, as this title was something I had secretly yearned for weeks prior and knew I would carry with me throughout my life. Reality grabbed at my shrieking consciousness as my physical self beamed, clutched her chest for pure surprise and proceeded to walk across the football field to be donned with a sash embroidered with the words, “Homecoming Queen”.

To understand the magnitude my award carried, my high school, Pflugerville High School, needs to be understood. Placed in a location my Calculus teacher once described as a “suburban location with rural

traditions and an urban population,” Pflugerville High School initially began as a predominantly white school in the white, German town of Pflugerville.

Pflugerville can be described as a quirky, small town with an abnormal obsession in putting “p’s” in front of any words that start with f, such as our inPfamous Pfirecracker Pfestival on July Pfourth at the Pfield, the same Pfootball Pfield I walked across that night that can seat 10,000 people. Pflugerville High School has now become one of the more diverse high schools in Central Texas.

However, I noticed this diversity had its limits. As much as everyone mingled and talked with each other in class or in the hallway, everyone hung out within their race outside the boundaries of the school. It was an implied tone that we were to accept the varying tones of each other’s skins, but not to extend beyond that fact. It was in things such as having a Diversity Day once a year but obtainings looks of disgust for 364 days at any food remotely foreign, or how I

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proudly donned the Confederate flag remained spotless.

As for homecoming, it is a tremendous matter in the rural south, or at least in Texas. Homecoming is an American tradition where alumna, teachers or anyone associated with the school, comes back that weekend to collectively enjoy watching the familiar football games. As for the homecoming court, a couple of boys and girls are nominated by the senior class, then the student body votes for who they believe should be Homecoming King and Homecoming Queen from the nominees. The lack of understanding about race and culture in Pflugerville became even more evident in this class-wide superficial competition when I was the first Asian girl to win Homecoming Queen, and I walked across that football field wearing an áo dài, a Vietnamese traditional dress.

Cheers erupted across the stadium from the crowd after it registered in my mind that my name had been been sounded in the loud intercoms. I drifted across the field with my arms linked around my parents guiding me along as I was overstrived to maintain good grades come with happiness and pride. but not be outwardly proud of The cheers, however, did not drown any these academic achievements out the number of people eyeing because it was “only through being my áo dài with mild marvel and Asian” that I earned them or the distaste, which I had not expected. rule of thumb in my neighborhood The bobbing, bright red “Make was to not have any ornamental America Great Again” hats were Asian decorations in the front yard just as loud as the awkward coughs because that is a classic target for and shuffles from large, white fambeing egged while houses that ilies. Some immediately got out of

their seats and proceeded to concessions for appealing hot dogs and fountain drinks rather than notice anything occurring across that football field.

America so great that I feel pressured to claim that identity solely?

How can one always be encouraged to be prideful and diverse in America, a country built on values of hatred and prejudice?

Afterwards, Asian people of dif- Should one even need to feel ferent backgrounds, some whom pride if they’re shedding off their I had never met before, came up culture anyway? to me after I had changed into my regular clothes to congratulate My mom stared at me as I took me with passionate embraces and the áo dài out of her closet.“Tại teary-eyed smiles because most, if sao bé gái lại muốn mặc?” my not all, had never worn their cul- mom retorts to me in Vietnamese, tural attire in such a public display the language primarily spoken at before in Pflugerville, Texas. People home: “Why would you want to of different cultures, ranging from wear that, baby?” different ages, congratulated me in a like manner and declared to me “Prom dresses cost above two that they too will don their cultural hundred dollars. We really can’t clothing more often now because afford one and you wore this of the confidence I had displayed dress for your wedding reception.

I would feel honored to wear it,” I through my attire that night. reply simply.

The seemingly miniscule and insignificant action of me choosing to A silence follows my statement consciously show off my identity to my mom and she responds through my clothing may seem with…disappointment. disproportionate to the expressive “You know you’ll attract weird stares actions of people of different eth- if you walk across the field wearing nicities who compelled to embrace that… I can’t join you in this. I’m just me, however I have come to under- going to wear a normal dress so at stand why they did. America is like least one of us will look like to be in high school, in the sense that there traditional Homecoming clothing… is an emphasis on conformity but There are so many Western dresses it is obtained through a certain you can pick from but please, I’m amount of patriotism and national- begging you, do not wear an ism. To be a true American in the áo dài.” eyes of others means shedding off any other cultural identities you I tightened my grip on my parents’ may have. I can declaratively state arms as we walked across the field that I am American, Vietnamese out of pure awe that I had won such and Texan, because after all, Texas a popularity contest after the many is its own entity. But what makes other, to be frank, white people

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that could have easily been chosen.

Until this moment, I had forgotten this conversation I had with my mother two days prior and I was concentrated on making it across the field without tripping on my heels. My parents tightened their grip on my arms as they noted the glances of appall that an uncommon dress had won, let alone an uncommon identity that had been added to the long history of white Homecoming Queens. They didn’t experience the same racist experiences I had throughout public school, but somehow they seemed to remember the first time I refused to bring home cooked meals to school, opting for Lunchables instead, or when I urged my parents to show up in Western clothes to my middle school graduation, or when I had made them feel as un-American as I had felt. My satin, gold áo dài with pink peach blossoms dotting the cloth and beads reflecting the lights in the stadium, swished against my ankles, paralleling my dad’s tuxedo and my mom’s purple cocktail dress. I was now their Vietnamese daughter that had forced them to become more American in my 18 years of upbringing.

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I would not be honest if I didn’t include that Homecoming Queen also entailed a level of privilege I had not previously experienced. A month after I won the title, I was cruising down a residential street with the country music blasting through the speakers in my beloved, generic 2007 Toyota Corolla, when I

spotted officer lights flashing in my rear view mirror. I glanced down at my car’s speedometer and my screw-up dawns on me. Reality grabbed at my shrieking consciousness over my recklessness as my physical self pulled over, already preparing my license and registration as well my composure for any other unnecessary interrogation.

The cops in Pflugerville were notorious for being racist and ruthless, dealing out fines and punishments with romantic Southern twangs.

The week prior to me getting pulled over, my black best friend, Tarik, was followed by a cop for more than 10 minutes as the cops staked him, waiting for a mistake. As a result, he got nervous, performed a rolling stop at a stop sign and got hit with a $500 ticket. These thoughts race through my mind as I close my eyes, waiting to get hit with a brutal fine.

“License and reg—wait a second.

Weren’t you the Homecoming Queen at the high school?”

We immediately strike up a small talk conversation about Pflugerville High School and after 5 minutes, less time it took for the cop to stalk my best friend, I get away with a speeding ticket. For the first time in my life, I felt white.

To this day, I do not know where I stand on my feelings about privilege after becoming Homecoming Queen. When I think about the joy I experienced from winning homecoming queen, I also think about the scrutiny I was under afterwards.

I ridded expletives from my Twitter account, made sure to say my yes ma’ams and no sirs on any given occasion and I began to groom my image when around adults. I felt the need to prove to others why I had earned this title, in part because I didn’t know how to explain to myself why I had won it after a long history of previous white Homecoming Queens. And I certainly did not feel like a hero for representing a culture different

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from America. I wore an áo dài partly because my family was pressed on money and couldn’t afford for me to buy any “normal” dress. If people knew this, would they still have reacted the same way? Does being homecoming queen mean I am more American?

Less American? I hug the previous homecoming queen, duck my head so that the crown can be nestled into my hair and as the audience stares at me and I beam right back.

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A Collection of Photos by Edi

Dai

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40 Photos Darius

by Jing

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COMPOSING A

FLEDGLING KOREAN AMERICAN VOICE

PETER

S. SHIN

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T

he woody aroma of freshly-brewed oolong tea beckons from the dead of a harsh Michigan winter. Professor Bright Sheng, as he welcomes me into his home, proudly insists that this valuable strain was picked from the high mountains of Taiwan. From the rack of charming Chinese bells greeting me as I take off my shoes to the photos with Yo-Yo Ma illuminating the hallways, Professor Sheng— a prominent Chinese composer— manifests his deep cultural roots in his home just as he does in his vibrant music.

Years later in Los Angeles, I think of my own walls: blank, save for the flag mosaic of our world’s nations gifted to me at a Portland ashram.

It is partly due to my collegiate nomadic lifestyle; aside from my cello and keyboard, I cut what was inessential to save legroom in the car. The underlying issue, I

would later confront, was not the lack of space, but the absence of belonging: floating in liminality between the two halves of my Korean-American identity, both of which—until recently—felt alien to me. My longing for an adjacency to my dissipating Korean identity would be profoundly reframed into what I now embrace as my American one, and my education and encounters with the American values of equality, service, and community were paramount to this growth.

My parents moved from South Korea to my birthplace of Kansas City, Missouri seeking better opportunities for me and my siblings, and—while not trained musicians themselves—were cognizant of music’s significance to their American dream. I started cello at four and my father worked at a gift card company while my mother worked as a dishwasher at my school cafeteria.

At 10, I pleaded for piano lessons, and I would not learn until years later that my aunt stepped in to pay for them and embolden my musical interests.

I began composing in high school and wrote a string orchestra work which I was allowed to conduct in class. Invigorated by the process, I was encouraged to begin composition lessons, and despite the uncertainty, my parents never questioned 47

my aspirations of becoming a professional composer. Here, the implications of my national identity remained peripheral to my burgeoning creativity.

It was not until my undergraduate studies in Michigan when life slapped me cold with lapses of identity encountering so many people who looked like me and hearing music outside the Western canons. As I was exposed to Chinese folk and Balinese gamelan music, life triggered an insatiable desire to connect with my Korean heritage, prompting my move to Los Angeles for graduate studies at the University of Southern California near the largest Korean population outside of Korea.

I started educating myself on Asian American histories neglected in my textbooks: the galvanizing murder of Vincent Chin to the L.A. Riots when violence between Korean storeowners and the black community befell Koreatown.

Here, years later—through ginseng chicken soup and barbecued pork belly—I satiated my need for the flavors of my family’s cooking blithely unaware of such histories.

I struggled to see the social impact of the music I was writing at the time and considered a career in arts administration could fulfill this civic desire while still indulging in my call to compose. In 2016, I participated in a League of American Orchestras management

seminar with mentorship from the Los Angeles to the New York Philharmonics. We visited Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles at the Heart of LA (YOLA at HOLA), a music program for underserved youth. On the outskirts of Koreatown, there were Latino and Korean children—two cultural communities that rarely interact deeply—learning together through music. Drawn to these efforts, I volunteered to develop a yearlong composition class culminating in world premieres. I met with the LA Phil to advocate for this to act as a feeder to their high school program which typically enrolls students of wealthy upbringings and little diversity.

As the lack of talent is the leading claim inexcluding people of color, by presenting premieres of my student composers who were as young as six, my aim is to make it harder for institutions to deny these greater opportunities.

This reinvigorated my understanding of the indelible impact music could have—something my parents inherently understood— and my civic desires began to bleed unabashedly into my own compositions.

Slant (2018) for orchestra is an homage to Korean-American conceptual artist Theresa Hak-Kyung Cha who reflects her family’s

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experience under Japanese occupation. Through this work, I experienced meaningful moments as a New American: sitting between my parents and aunt during the premiere at Carnegie Hall, reading Cha’s story mentioned in a review by the New York Times, concertgoers tearfully sharing similar family histories, and—to my astonishment—my aunt revealing her own experience hiding in bomb shelters and being forced to adopt the Japanese name Yumiko, to which she reflected: “It’s actually quite a pretty name.” Sharing stories of pioneering Americans like Cha who are sidelined in America’s storyline can facilitate understanding, and music is a powerful vessel for these stories and values to thrive.

In our final lesson, Professor Sheng—through our kinship as Asian composers—predicted that I would be confronted with a desire to connect with my Korean heritage. He was right, but my ambitions are manifold: challenge what it means to look and sound like an American composer, break down the silos between institutions and our country’s rich cultural landscape, and facilitate exchange, finding ways to enrich each other through our colorful differences. I believe that music is crucial in creating these meaningful changes.

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Fermented Pride Elijah Hong

A

jar of kimchi is like a Van Gogh painting. Turbulent vortexes of chili pepper and Napa cabbage become brush strokes of swirling green and violent red. Fluid leaves draw resemblance to The Starry Night: spiced cabbage as the painting’s nebulous sky. Some wonder how Van Gogh could have extracted such a celestial image from the French countryside, but I understand his artistry when I look at a jar of kimchi. That bloody cosmos of vegetable makes me homesick for a world I’ve only ever known through taste, but one that I have always longed for. On the topic of space, more modern depictions of our universe—astronomical landscapes taken by the Hubble Space Telescope—capture eons of space time, just as a single jar of kimchi contains centuries of Korean tradition.

50 In the Hong household, where stomachs are many and hungry, kimchi is constant. If we’ve run out of kimchi, only one question is asked: when will we be able buy more? The urgency affiliated with our pickled crucifera reaches apocalyptic proportions. If the ten plagues of Egypt occurred in ancient Korea, shortage of kimchi would certainly be one of the calamities. As such, we treat the acquisition of this sine qua non with respect and prudence.

Growing up, every other month or so, my family would drive to my grandmother’s apartment across town to pick up some of her homemade kimchi. Even though we sometimes buy our kimchi from Asian supermarkets for convenience, we’re still very proud of my grandmother’s kimchi. She knows it’s good; my family knows it’s good; our whole Korean church knows it’s good. She makes it herself in a messy, time-consuming process that took a lifetime to master. Sometimes she adds a little bit of Sprite to the mix— a secret that pairs each bite with a refreshing punch. My grandma’s kimchi is perfect in every way.

It has exactly the right balance of spice, and she makes sure to let it ferment for at least a week. For, if kimchi isn’t allowed the proper time to ferment, the taste is feeble and diluted.

Driving home from my grandmother’s apartment, I once put the jar in the back seat and sat down in the front. “Don’t do that,” my mom scolded me. “Hold it up front with you, it might fall.” Of course, she was right. Not only would it be a nightmare cleaning up a spilled jar of kimchi, but it would also be an act of disrespect to leave it in the back. Would, for example, a priest leave their bible in the back seat; or a soldier, their rifle? I sit with the kimchi jar between my legs because that jar has protected me from more than I can describe. The pride in those vegetables has saved me from identity crisis after identity crisis.

When my dad’s family immigrated to Detroit in the 60s, I imagine my grandfather arriving with a hat in one hand, suitcase in the other, and a jar of my grandmother’s kimchi nestled under his arm. For a second-and-a-half-generation immigrant like myself, that hypothetical jar of kimchi is one of few artifacts I have from the motherland. My parents lost the accent, my older sisters lost the language, and my younger sister and I lost basically everything else. All I seemingly have left are my Korean cuisine and monolids. Ah! Those damned monolids.

I grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood in the suburbs of Nashville, so I could always tell there was something different

51 between us and our Caucasian neighbors; I just couldn’t identify the mysterious impediment. Some time in middle school, however, I did notice one distressing trend.

The majority of my school friends were non-white, which, I might add, was a statistical feat in my part of town. I had a couple white friends, but none whose identity was as permanent or apparent as mine. From then on, I strove to achieve normalcy by blaming anything that potentially distinguished me from my white backdrop. I changed the way I dressed.

Jeans and t-shirts weren’t normal enough for my liking, and neither were the straight-fit, ironed dress pants my mom wanted me to wear. I deduced that boat shoes, salmon khakis, and pastel shirts were the uniform for regular American boys, as they were a staple in my community. I asked my mom to buy me the specified articles of clothing, but even after buying the preppiest outfits in Nashville, I still felt foreign.

Had I gotten the wrong style of boat shoes? Were my shirts the right brand? Did my khakis fit the right way? Despite my efforts, nothing seemed to change my alien status. I curated the music I listened to, the people I spent time with, and the way I spoke—each adhering to my illusive definition of America.

Even kimchi got in the way of my mission to assimilate. Every time I ate it, I grew self-conscious of my incriminating breath. Before school, my mom used to cook dinner-sized breakfasts, believing it would help me grow taller. These meals consisted of my favorite Korean foods—miyeok guk, kimchi bokkeumbap, bulgogi, seolleongtang, and other garlicy, vinegary, odorous dishes. I absolutely loved it, but it was indefensibly un-American. As I grew older and more self-conscious, and when my mouthwash couldn’t cleanse my scarlet kimchi breath, I ultimately renounced those treasonous meals. I claimed that I wasn’t hungry or that I didn’t have time, eschewing my beloved kimchi for more socially acceptable breakfast bars and cereal. It was a sacrifice I was willing to make to be normal.

Kimchi, while admittedly just another food, represents an irrevocable organ of my identity.

It’s a symbol of matrilineal tradition, geopolitical inheritance, and my seemingly contentious existence in America. Unable to reconcile my desired self-image with an inherent appendage of my being, I chose instead to sever that ear.

There are few things more fragile than the Asian-American psyche.

Caught in a perpetual tug of war between Asian and American, the hyphenated experience is taut.

52 For the born-here’s and born-there’s, and the actually-from-here’s and actually-from-there’s, all must navigate this balancing act in tactful and unforgiving diplomacy. We Asian-Americans are all hypochondriacs when it comes to identity; we’re always too this or too that.

We’re too good at school, or not good enough. We’re too Asian or too American. The image of Asians projected by white America creates a dissonant image like a 3D movie without the special glasses.

Incapable of fulfilling society’s expectations for us, we are the ball in a tennis match—rallied back and forth by unforgiving forehands and backhands of micro-aggressive assumptions.

Unlike my grandmother’s kimchi, I’m always going to be too this or too that. What I’ve begun to learn is how to be comfortable with that. Returning to the subject of my mother’s breakfasts: I would forego my kimchi in the morning, but the façade tumbled down when I got home from school.

After school, I ate all the Korean food my stomach could desire. I didn’t have to worry about subverting American society with my kimchi breath. In a way, kimchi softened my rejection by mainstream society. It saved me from getting lost in the indefinite space between American and Korean.

Each day at school I would jump into the void, renouncing my

relationship with kimchi and Koreanness. But each day, when I failed to discover America, kimchi would anticipate my return with open arms. It was my tether, my safety line. Like an astronaut risking the vacuum of space, I was forever connected by kimchi to my Korean heritage.

Our fermented friend should be the mascot of self-acceptance.

Kimchi smells likes socks and looks like bloody murder, yet everyone loves it. Even mainstream Americans are jumping on the bandwagon, following the hipsters. Furthermore, there’s no right type of kimchi; in fact, there are hundreds of variations that allow for individuality and personal expression. There’s kakkdugi, baek-kimchi, mul kimchi, chonggak kimchi, oi kimchi, and so on kimchi, by definition, is a dish celebrated for its diversity. Coming to openly embrace my love for kimchi has taught me to accept myself, to accept my Korean heritage, to not be afraid of being too much, and to be proud of myself.

The kimchi jar is my reminder.

When I’m embarrassed about succeeding in school, I take pride in the livelihood my parents secured through their educations. When I wish I could blend in with the white crowd, I remind myself of my oh-so-delicious Korean entrees and why it’s good to be Korean.

Slow Thinking: Pre-Med Cathy

Why ?

Duong

T

he obvious answer: Can help a lot of people and make a lot of money; the future is set.

The cryptic answer: “To say the past is bloodless is privilege” —Bao Phi. The honest truth: Now that I’m in college, the question that my relatives, parents’ friends, and friends’ parents regularly ask me is, “What are you studying?” or “What’s your major?” It’s a loaded question. We all know that there exists two very good answers that will satisfy everyone, have them nodding their heads and not ask any more questions, because the journey to financial stability (at least after paying off student loans) has been secured.

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“Oh, you’re pre-med/pre-law! Good for you. Your parents must be proud.”

Next on the list of acceptable responses is being in a STEM-related field, like computer science or engineering. Finally, on the last rung of the ladder is the arts and humanities.

“What can you do with a Philosophy major, again?” “You still want to be a dancer? Let’s start thinking about the real future, now.” “What are you hoping to do with an English major?” Ultimately they’re left with one question, “Well, how did your parents react?”

And here is when I dodge the question altogether, or surprise them with my fortunate reality that my parents actually trust me with my life choices.

But my answer gets more and more uncertain each time, because the more conscious I am of how I answer the question to a specific person, the more out-of-touch I fear I become with what I want to do.

Because at times I feel like my answer is a cop-out, an answer constructed to seek approval from my older Vietnamese-American relatives who will nod approvingly when I tell them, “I’m pre-med.” I’ve made the mistake of answering “I’m an English major,” before. Many times have I felt the need to explain, to reassure, to justify my love for the humanities by referring to my STEM classes that I was taking for pre-med. Indeed, the safest and quickest answer for me has been to say “pre-med,” nod ambiguously

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when they ask “so Biology major?” and successfully dodge the question, “What can English majors do?”

I don’t know who I’m trying to please when I tack on “pre-med” to my English major, because my parents don’t have those “be a doctor or lawyer” expectations. The reason why I’m premed is multidimensional, an answer I’m struggling to analyze before I commit it to my future. Whose expectations am I trying to meet and why?

And I realize that the way my culture, my Vietnamese-American relatives, family, friends hold the occupation of doctor and lawyer in the highest regard has made me yearn to achieve this dream as a demand of respect for my parents. As a way to redeem my parents’ sacrifices.

It is a story that aligns with most Vietnamese boat people’s stories: escaping Communist Vietnam by boat, aimlessly drifting upon pirate-infested oceans until taken in by foreign countries, enduring inhumane conditions in refugee camps, and after years of being uprooted from the motherland, being able to come to America and begin again.

But finding a home within America is hard, especially when one’s skin color is different, when one doesn’t speak English, when a stranger has only known of one’s home country in the shadow of war. My parents fled communist Vietnam by boat, spent years at a refugee camp in Hong Kong, and

finally made it to America. For all the education that my father had in Vietnam, he became a TV repairman here to support my family, carrying heavy broken TVs and trying his hand at antique stereos that old men can’t bear to throw out. My mother stayed at home to take care of my older sister and me. My Vietnamese-American friends were raised in similar circumstances, and my hometown of Garden Grove in Southern California is filled with these generations of self-sacrificing Vietnamese immigrants who came to America for a better life, for them and their children.

I want to succeed to make my parents proud. Being a doctor is one of the hardest things to achieve, but one that garners the most respect from my Vietnamese-American community, and from society in general. I decided that I want to be a doctor so that my parents can tell their friends, their acquaintances, the strangers they meet who look down on their broken English, their thrifted outfits, their pickled lunches, the remnants of home they wear on their sleeves that ever only communicate “difference” to the average American — that in spite of how inferior we have seemed in our past silence, my parents will be able to say, with dignity, that they raised a doctor.

And I admit that it was for the same reason that I applied to Yale—so that my parents would be able to say that they had a daughter at an Ivy League school. Coming from a low-income

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family where neither of my parents had gone to college, I wanted my success story to compensate for the prejudice, the racism that my parents had endured as they struggled to establish a life for our family in America, a society that refused to listen to the worthwhile things they had to share because they didn’t look or speak like they “belonged” here. It’s the protection that Asian-American parents want to give their kids: a high education guaranteeing an end to the discrimination that they had to go through a generation before.

But I wonder if my decision to become a doctor would preserve and perpetuate this outdated belief that one can only be a doctor or a lawyer in order to succeed, make a name for oneself and for one’s family. I am equally tired of being yet another poster child for the model minority myth, to have my family-oriented goals be used by the same society to undermine other minority group’s efforts—because that is false. I am not proud of my Asian-American community for the unhealthy competition it breeds among students. The culture of parents comparing their children to their relative’s children, their peers, asking the loaded question, “Why can’t you be more like ___?” There will always be someone who raises the bar, surpassing the tiger mom’s expectations, and the rest of us pays for not being “good enough”—sometimes, with one’s own life, crumbling beneath heavy expectations.

I am now in a state of limbo—of being pre-med English, a compromise between my culture’s expectations and America’s sermon of “follow your heart.”

Do I enjoy being pre-med English at Yale? The answer so far is yes: I feel content to be taking a balance of STEM and non-STEM classes, even as I hate the distance between Science Hill and Linsly-Chittenden Hall. Yet the struggle to maintain my grades in both my pre-med requirements and English courses becomes more real as I advance in my academic career, and I find my labs filling up the times that I would’ve been able to take an amazing seminar in the humanities.

Each time I express my frustrations about how pre-med classes are preventing me from choosing interesting humanities classes, my friends ask me, “If you love English and Art History so much, why not just follow your passions?” And then I realize I’m a hypocrite, because if any of my friends had complained about being pre-med when they’d rather do something else—well, I would’ve encourage them to just follow their dreams too.

But as I considered the question again and again—the question of why I’m pre-med—the reality becomes clear: I personally cannot allow myself to major in only English or only the humanities. This decision rests upon my personal values.

Perhaps I’m voluntarily carrying the weight of my family; perhaps no one

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had ever asked me to. Perhaps this is an excuse I’ve created to give myself a sense of purpose as I go through life, another motive to keep learning, keep achieving for a reason that is bigger than myself. But in order to create a meaningful future for myself, it’s non-negotiable to me that I must consider how I can directly impact the Vietnamese-American community that has raised me.

The American maxim of “follow your passions” is inherently selfish to me. I am unable to commit myself to a future job where I don’t factor in my family, my long-distance relatives, my AsianAmerican community. To me, these expectations go without questions; to pay my respects, take care of my family and parents in old age — these are tenets of my Vietnamese upbringing.

Even though I am a second-generation Vietnamese-American, I still inherit a collective history of pain and trauma that I feel I must redeem. The Vietnamese-American poet Bao Phi wrote in his poem “April 30, 2014” — a poem about Black April and the Fall of Saigon: “To say the past is the past is bloodless privilege.” I feel uncomfortable, even guilty, to be solely anything but pre-med. At least being a doctor for my Vietnamese-American community will help me to one day heal the physical wounds of my people —the type of healing that begins with pain that can be identified through diagnostic tests, discovered through physical checkups.

Yes, I know that being an English major and sharing the important story of my people’s heroic, tragic, brave journeys to America can offer another type of healing—I know that words have power. But my English words, even in this essay in which I want to pour out my heart for the older Vietnamese-American generation who have put their own life-long dreams on hold to foster the dreams of the next generation, become lost in translation. What would it take for the older Vietnamese-American generation to understand these same Roman characters, but stripped of Vietnamese accents? Will they be able to recognize me, an English major so well-versed in American literature and culture that she begins to forget the Vietnamese poetry her great grandmother taught her when she was a child? Can they see that she is still true to the roots of her mother tongue, however many words left that she can speak, however many words left her relatives can understand?

and women who took on roles of pioneers in this foreign land, working their way up from manicurists and liquor store keepers, establishing their permanent presence in America. All this they overcame, so that us second-generation kids can grow up a little less intimidated, a little more hopeful in a nation where success, and beauty, and fame don’t look much like ourselves. So I can only expect the best from myself—to be a doctor— and give back, because my educational opportunities were built on their backs.

These are the questions, the reasons, the conflicts I’ve wrestled with—and am still wrestling with—in my Yale career. It is a dilemma of expectations—of whose expectations I am fulfilling, and of what exactly those expectations are. What is my duty as a second generation VietnameseAmerican daughter of an immigrant family? Whose sacrifices am I trying to redeem as I strive for success? How are my academic choices a contribution to or a result of society’s expecFor all that I write, I can’t bear know- tations for an Asian-American in ing that I will never be able to perfectly higher education? translate my thoughts, my theses, my academic arguments, my endeavors I am unsettled. In what ways are my to my parents, who can’t understand perceived expectations of being Asian, English—the very subject that I am of being Vietnamese in America, majoring in. I know that my parents building me up, or undoing my idenwill always support me no matter what tity as me, the individual? major I choose and how I plan to get All I know to do now is reflect through the rest of this life, but I can’t on my people’s history, and push dismiss the privilege I have had. I owe myself toward academic success in so much to the older Vietnamese- the present.

American generation—the brave men

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CHOPSTICK A BRI BETWEE TWO CULTURES GRACE JIN

KS: IDGE EN

S

I

remember being confused by a classmate who had asked about my “helicopter parents.” I had never heard the term used to stereotype strict, tiger-esque Chinese parents before. As soon as he explained it, I brushed him off with a casual, “Nah, my parents aren’t that Asian.” Looking back, what did that mean? My parents, both born and raised in Beijing, were obviously as Chinese—and therefore, Asian—as it got. I now notice that the moment represents an unconscious pattern in how I spoke about my heritage: I, like my sister and many of my Chinese-American friends, wanted to assimilate. I’ve never wanted to be white, but I found myself constantly denying supposedly Chinese characteristics. I wanted to speak from the perspective of an ethnic minority, but be perceived just like everyone else.

and the representation that does exist is riddled with stereotypes. Often, those stereotypes aren’t even about China.

Asian-Americans are lumped together from census questions to foreign policy, giving the false impression of a homogenous Asia. Our numbers are surprising: Asian-Americans were recently the fastest growing immigrant demographic, increasing by over 600% in the past 30 years. However, even voter outreach programs targeting AsianAmericans do little for our 47% voter turnout, compared to 66% for black voters and 64% for non-Hispanic, white Americans (Kim). Hollywood pushes the issue further—just to name a single instance, Scarlett Johansson, a blondehaired, blue-eyed white actress, was cast as a Japanese character in a movie based off a popular manga. When asked about the whitewashed role, Johansson replied that her character was “essentially identity-less,” immediately erasing the character’s very identification nonchalantly (Rose). Public representation of Asian-Americans is next to none, and Chinese-Americans are even more invisible through the narrative of sameness amongst Asian immigrants to America, leaving second-generation ChineseAmericans like me with little direction to follow to find our identity. And that’s something I’ve always struggled with: fully Chinese, yet fully American, my identity feels like I’m bridging two conflicting cultures.

I’m what they call an ABC—AmericanBorn Chinese. All my ancestors, as far as I know, come from mainland China. My grandparents lived through the horrors of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution; The media doesn’t help, either. Chinesemy aunts and uncles never graduated Americans have very little representation, high school because of Mao’s mandatory

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farming initiatives. After losing family and friends to the Great Famine, my grandparents were adamant that their children, my parents, would have all the opportunities they could. My parents met in college, and after protesting together during the Tiananmen Massacre, they both applied to graduate schools in America seeking greater political freedom, and economic mobility. Over 20 years ago, they immigrated to North Carolina, where my sister and I were born, and have lived ever since.

Without any other family in America, we live life as many Chinese-American families do—speaking in Chinglish, celebrating two different New Year’s, and alternating food practices.

My parents were amongst the small percentage of Chinese students lucky enough to enter the United States through their education, but it usually isn’t so easy.

I’m second-generation American, but many Chinese-Americans go four to five generations back. As early as the 1850s, Chinese immigrants flocked to the United States for two reasons: the rumor of gold and to build the Transcontinental Railroad. Such workers were only paid about a fifth of what their white counterparts made, driving up demand within North America for exploitative Chinese labor (Holland 151). When the construction ended, Chinese workers became pure competitors against white workers at a lower wage, spurring fervent xenophobia against Chinese immigrants.

Constant lynchings and murders eventually built up to the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, the first and only racially-targeted immigration law in US history. The Chinese Exclusion Act not only froze the flow of immigration from China, but also prohibited assimilation

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of existing immigrants by banning them from becoming citizens. The sudden shift in Chinese perception revealed the deeply exploitative nature of the “recruitment” of Chinese workers. Americans forced Chinese immigration for cheap labor, but failed to recognize them as accepted immigrants.

In the face of such visceral hatred, early Chinese immigrants turned to food for resistance. Testimonies mention that the very first Chinatown in San Francisco was a product of misfortune. Chinese immigrants feared leaving the few blocks where other Chinese residents lived eventually forming “Chinatowns.”

Further, the Chinese Exclusion Act’s clause rendered Chinese immigrants stateless, and thus, jobless, unless they made their own jobs. Chinatown was born out of necessity. When Chinese immigrants couldn’t work for others, creating their own professions within the community was the only option. This led to uniquely Chinese-American dishes: chop suey, lo mein, and other creations were invented to mesh Chinese ingredients with American cooking methods.

Much like Trinidadian-Indian food or Louisianan Creole cuisine, ChineseAmerican food became an entanglement of necessity homesickness, and adaptation (Fung). This was a way to ease the introduction of Chinese cuisine to white Americans, and thus, further humanize Chinese immigrants as not too different from white Americans.

These dishes became wildly popular amongst the white American community, who once again saw Chinese food as a cheap resource to consume without much thought, turning Chinatown into a restaurant destination instead of a safe haven. Much like my own family,

the Chinese immigrants wanted to preserve their cultural values despite ethnic isolation. While they didn’t seek to assimilate into white culture, they simply wanted to gain the opportunities that white Americans had ( Jung 177). When a fire struck San Francisco, Chinese immigrants capitalized on the ability to rebuild and designed all their restaurants to look like traditional Chinese pagodas, attracting even more tourists. By creating a distinctly Chinese-American food culture, Chinese-Americans were able to convince xenophobic white Americans to live in relative harmony alongside Chinatown.

The importance of food has always been palpable in my Chinese heritage, even before I knew of the history. I’ve visited my family in Beijing nine times now, each trip around a month long. In that month, my extended family manages to squeeze in a feast every other day, each meal paying homage to a different city’s cuisine. It seems like tradition to order twice the number of dishes than people present, making the food left afterwards look like a full table. The overloading of dishes is out of respect; in China, the same excessively hospitable food culture typically shown to guests or business clients is extended to family. Eating is packed with tradition and meaning— how you place your chopsticks, the order in which you eat, even the seats where you sit. Meals usually last several hours, as they’re seen as a place for conversation, cards, familial bonding, and the eventual lengthy fights over who covers the bill.

Since I only visit my extended family every few years, it appears most of my memories with them are over a restaurant table, and most of the gifts come in forms of traditional snacks. When

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thinking of my aunts, grandparents, cousins, a specific taste comes to mind.

Food has always been important to my family and I, but I have a special affinity for Chinese-American cuisine. My high-school cafeteria had a monthly “Chinese” day, or as us students called it, “Fasian”—fake Asian—day. Complete with stir fry noodles featuring steak and fried rice with bacon, my friends complained about the lack of authenticity on Fasian day, thus, the name. But I loved it.

Something about the “unauthentic” soy sauce doused rice noodles with julienned carrots, a dish that would be deemed a culinary faux pas in mainland China, felt like home. Even when my parents could easily cook authentic Chinese food at home, I asked to visit Noodles & Company, local takeout restaurants, or mall Chinese food chains instead. My parents often laughed in confusion, since when finding restaurants that serves worldly foods in America, my family, like most others, prides authenticity as a marker of quality.

But to me, it’s a common misconception that Fasian food is simply imitation Chinese, as recipes were borne from history of Chinese immigrants and their struggles. Take soy sauce rice noodles with julienned carrots, for example. Soy sauce is an ingredient universally found in Asian sauces, but Chinese soy sauces like Lee Kum Kee’s were marketed as more “pure” for being made with the first pressing of fermented soybeans, unlike their Japanese or laboratory equivalents (Lee-Adrian). This allowed Chinese soy sauces to gain popularity in household cooking despite the initial fear of exotic seasonings, becoming a way to add sodium to dishes without directly using

salt. Rice noodles aren’t used commonly in traditional Chinese cuisine, but their textural similarity to fettuccine and other types of pasta made them a fan favorite in Chinese-American noodle dishes like chow fun. And even though carrots are sometimes used in Chinese dishes, small alterations like julienning carrots, a French preparation adopted by American chefs, instead of chopping them into 丝, or strips, made the presentation of Chinese-American food more familiar for white Americans. And that’s precisely what Chinese-American cuisine is about—deliberately modified Chinese dishes that belong to my diaspora’s struggle for acceptance.

Friends or Seinfeld helped turn ChineseAmerican food from a foreign oddity to an everyday staple, as white Americans felt more comfortable seeing white characters use the seemingly alien utensil.

Chopsticks thus turned into a marketing mechanic for Chinese-American restaurants: even today, common names for such restaurants include “Golden Chopsticks” or “Bamboo Chopsticks.”

Despite their contentious history, chopsticks quickly became ubiquitous alongside Americanized Chinese food— China is estimated to produce over 57 billion pairs yearly, many for consumption overseas (Wang 160). The same goes for households: chopsticks’ multiple purposes as a spatula, a whisk, and a fork all At the root of Chinese-American food is in one make them omnipresent in even its accompanying utensil: the chopstick. the most assimilated households.

The word chopstick is pronounced the same as the word “bridge” in Japanese, Given their ubiquity, it always comes and chopsticks indeed serve as the bridge as a surprise when someone realizes between Chinese food and an American my inability to use chopsticks. In high audience. My sister and I often gift pairs school, I started to embrace my Chineseof ornate chopsticks after visiting China American identity instead of hiding because they’re unique enough to serve as it, and prided myself in being comforta travel souvenir, but recognizable enough able in Beijing, China, and Cary, North to be universally enjoyed. But even the Carolina alike. After years of Saturday chopsticks themselves were initially language school, my Mandarin speaking met with resistance. European explorers abilities were close to those of a native viewed chopsticks as dirty and unsani- speaker’s, which helped me blend in tary. Additionally, chopsticks provided when speaking to my relatives in China. enough dexterity with tiny foods that the Before our visits in China, I would do a need for hands was eliminated, and thus, bit of research on the popular music in napkins and tablecloths. The lack of nap- China and a bit of the current events, and kins was “hoggish,” “hasty,” and “unciv- my cousins were impressed when I knew ilized”, and chopsticks were a primitive a lot of their conversation topics already. indication of the Chinese’s presence Deep down, I was desperate to find my (Wang 147). However, perception began identity in both China and America, to change as chopsticks became a recog- terrified of seeming too much of one nizable symbol in sitcoms and movies as instead of fully both. And I managed to characters ate Chinese food from take- convince both sides. Even though most out boxes (Wang 144). The depiction couldn’t do it, I was fully Chinese, and of chopsticks as an everyday utensil in fully American.

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Until it came to chopsticks. No matter how much I practiced, I was never able to master the proper grip that children in China are expected to know by three years old (Wong et al.). At family dinners, distant relatives always complimented my knowledge of Chinese culture, my ability to speak the language, my capability to come off as, well, Chinese. However, the illusion disappeared as soon as I picked up my chopsticks: my grip inevitably exposed my inability to be fully Chinese.

I was mocked as less dexterous with chopsticks than my five-year-old cousins, and with that, I felt my Chinese identity slipping away. The image of a fully Chinese, fully American girl I had carefully crafted had been threatened by an eating utensil.

But I’ve learned that I shouldn’t fear my relatives’ mocking. Even though my grip is entirely untraditional, I’m still able to use my chopsticks and pick up grains of sticky rice just like someone with “proper” grip, and I can eat with as much efficiency as my cousins. Just like my proficiency with Mandarin: even though my reading and writing skills are subpar, technological development in both China and America has made my speaking and listening skills all that I need to communicate. Just like the food we make at home: dumplings are made with 韭菜, of course, but they’re also filled with Nutella. My chopsticks grip opened my eyes up to the real Chinese-American culture—a blend created by and for my diaspora, a blend that’s not Chinese nor American, but uniquely itself.

food. But alongside the numerous benefits new Chinese-American recipes bring there’s pushback. Chinese-American food has the capability of seeming like whitewashing Chinese cuisine, especially as white Americans identify the diaspora’s creation as the only food of China. Furthermore, Chinese-American food’s depiction as cheap, greasy food forces it into a fast-food niche: ChineseAmerican dishes are often pigeonholed as low-quality, low-class food, forcing Chinese-Americans to provide labor-intensive, complex dishes at incredibly low prices. Even the very tools of resistance inextricably linked to ChineseAmerican cuisine, chopsticks, are being whitewashed. Panda Express, a popular Chinese-American fast food chain, announced in 2016 that they had invented the “chork,” a chopstick-fork hybrid that rendered technique unnecessary (Pierson). But even with its faults, Chinese-American cuisine is only growing in popularity and diversity, becoming its own culinary phenomenon.

Chinese-American food emerged from disenfranchised immigrants, turning from dishes of necessity to American restaurant staples. To me, it’s helped me discover a little more about my history, as a child of immigrants grappling with where I fit into the complex narrative of China and America, even when that narrative is never discussed. And at the center of all that are chopsticks: a symbol for Chinese-American acceptance, a bridge between foreign cultures. And so, it’s okay that my chopsticks grip is unwieldy, untraditional, un-Chinese. Much like As with any uprooted ethnicity thrown Chinese-American food, my grip is repinto a hostile environment, Chinese- resentative of: not quite fully Chinese, Americans took to their cultural roots to but not quite fully American. resist xenophobia: and for us, that was

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Works Cited Fung, Richard, director. Dal Puri Diaspora. 2012.

Holland, K. M. (2007). A History of Chinese

Immigration in the United States and

Canada. The American Review of

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What

Whiteness

Is:

An Autobiographical Essay

Chen

W

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Kevin

hiteness is sitting on the bus at the age of six, on your way to kindergarten, and being called “that weird chink kid” from a fifth grader sitting in the back. It’s the collective stares that all the kids give you, the American kids who come from big, loving homes full of families who speak English, that make you feel like an animal in a zoo while they are the spectators.

It’s the feeling of inferiority that ignites every time your classmates share stories about their families— families that eat dinner together at 6pm every night, with dinner plates decorated with roast beef, steak, and peas. You feel different hearing these stories, thinking about how you must eat alone, how you must wait for your parents to come home from work at 11 pm every evening in order to first see them. Although

you don’t understand it yet, your upbringing—in an eighty percent white town on middle-class, suburban Long Island—will shape how you view the world. You may currently be a naïve elementary school student who cannot yet fully understand racial difference, but you are already beginning to realize it around you. Nobody looks like you. Nobody is embarrassed to speak to their grandmothers, in their native tongues, at the bus stop like you are.

Nobody lives like you must.

Whiteness is your mother, sleepyeyed and sick, telling you to cancel the order that you helped her make because the customer thinks that her General Tso’s Chicken is made of dog. As an enthusiastic sixth grader helping his parents out at their Chinese takeout restaurant, you’re confused—why are people making up lies about your food, about your culture?

At eleven, you are beginning to connect the dots—understanding how your race and class define how your classmates and teachers view you. But you begin to foolishly internalize this difference, because you think that you don’t have any other options—everyone on this island is white. You no longer bring in the xiaolongbao that your grandmother packs for you for lunch every morning, instead opting to buy your lunch in the cafeterias—green beans, mashed potatoes, and chocolate milk on plastic trays. You start to tell your dad to pick you up two blocks from

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the school, because you don’t want your classmates seeing his worn-down Camry that he uses as a delivery car, and you certainly don’t want them to hear his strong Chinese accent.

You want to be white now.

Whiteness is coming out as gay during your freshman year of high school in an English presentation, after years of hiding in the shadows in fear of prejudice from your classmates, teachers, and family members. Your class gives you a half-hearted clap, and then vehemently lauds and hugs the popular, white gay for his presentation on RuPaul’s Drag Race. It’s your classmates’ silence that diminishes you when you build up the courage to share your historical and generational trauma, queer and Asian experiences, and insecurities as a translator for your parents—ones that have been pent up for years now, the ones that you’ve never had the vocabulary to articulate, nor have had anybody to discuss it with.

You realize, now, that you still do not.

Whiteness is the dichotomy between resenting the structures that racially otherize you, while still envying your white peers.

They do not ever have to think about their place in their own communities, the obstacles their families overcame to get to the United States, nor the tensions between their family’s dogmatic values of marriage and their own sexualities.

You wonder throughout the rest of your high school experience if you should speak out about their silence. Is it wrong of them to be apathetic towards your experiences, and should you resent them? Should you still be friends with people who don’t have a culture, community, or identity?

Or, perhaps, are you being selfish, because if you were white like them, would you care, would you stay insulated in an ignorant bubble like theirs? You choose not to say anything—they just won’t understand your frustration.

Whiteness is beginning to cascade into your first year of university.

It’s being a young adult now, yet still having difficulties grappling with your identities, still feeling the same sentiments of inferiority that you felt in kindergarten at a seemingly “diverse” institution.

It’s going through your lowest points first semester, yet not wanting to find a therapist to talk about your queer and Asian struggles, simply because no counselor is queer and Asian. It’s then you seeing Rumpus Magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful List decorating every residential college dining hall, as you wonder why hardly anybody who looks like you are on it. You attend a Pride Parade over the summer, but only notice the white men being applauded for their courage, bravery, and masculinity that even the gay community aestheticizes. It’s the continuous internalization of these beauty ideals—the same ones that you

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see plastered on billboards and on television—that you continue to actively yearn for them in yourself.

You spend $80 on colored contacts, despite your perfect vision, telling yourself that you want to try them out for fun, but internally, you know it is to look more like the lighter-eyed white men that society cherishes. You also want these beauty ideals in your partner— you swipe right on more of the white men that you see on Tinder, because you have been conditioned to think that they are more attractive. You are growing up, yet you still want to be white.

Whiteness, now, serves a lens through which I view myself and my positionality. This is facilitated, ironically, by Yale—a predominately white institution. College has served as a space for me to transition into adulthood, a space where I am separated by fullfledged whiteness, one in which I now have room and headspace to contemplate my own identity.

I am grateful for the courses that Yale has offered me during my first year, as they have informed me of my racial difference. I learned about W.E.B. Du Bois’ theory of double consciousness, and it has not left my mind since. His concept of being unable to reconcile his black identity with whiteness rings similarly in my life—my Asian and “American” identities are partitioned. Like Du Bois, I view myself and my intersectionality through different compartments.

My upbringing, entrenched in

whiteness, has conditioned me to view my queer, my immigrant, my low-income, and my firstgeneration identities through its very framework. Through academic scholarship, I am now starting to realize how applicable other experiences are to mine—granting me a new perspective through which I have become hyper-cognizant of racism: not only the blatant discrimination and microaggressions perpetuated by my ignorant Long Island classmates, but also the structures and systems in place that foster whiteness.

I feel inferior being the son of restaurant owners or a queer, Asian person. I realize how these sentiments of “otherness” have been imposed on people of color— particularly Asian Americans— since their migrations to the United States. I understand now how racism is rooted in history, and how white privilege and institutional white supremacy continue to be in tension with my identity.

I now have a new epistemology to think about my life—through the lens of Du Bois and many other historians and scholars.

I cannot honestly say that my transition from childhood into young adulthood was profound in me completely dismantling whiteness from my life. Rather, it has allowed me to shift my conceptions and paradigms of how whiteness fits into my world, and how insidiously it operates throughout space and time. The most jarring ontology that I have reconceptualized is how I view my experiences during my youth. Looking back to my first day of kindergarten, I now question why a fifth-grade bully called me by a racial slur.

I think back to Professor Mary Lui’s Asian American History course, remembering the valences of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, understanding the legacies of state and legally-codified racism and otherization of Asians in the United States. Like the Chinese migrant workers, I continue to be excluded.

I also look back to my queerness and to my class, wondering why

Whiteness is still a facet of my life I struggle with, and I still have difficulties grappling with my identity. When I hear about my classmates at Yale, who are the sons and daughters of white millionaires, or when I go back to Long Island and see the spatial differentiation of power between my mother behind the counter and a wealthy, white woman whom she is serving— I still taste my historic inferiority.

However, my new perspective on the world allows me to constantly probe and challenge these racial dynamics. My ethnic studies classes and my ER&M major provide me with the academic space to study racial difference; my second home at the Asian American Cultural Center then allows me to contemplate and act on how I resist it. Lastly, I no longer view myself as a victim to whiteness, nor do I still feel the need to constantly internalize it.

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Reflecting now upon my youth, as a young adult and college student, I now realize the sheer agency that I have exercised.

As a queer, low-income immigrant of color, with racial and class odds against me, I have risen above

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whiteness and have overcome its hegemony. Whiteness is now changing the ways in which I view my own agency, which now informs and empowers my intersectional identity.

I am my grandfathers.

I am not my grandfathers.

For my Migrants and Refugees in Literature class, I wrote about my grandfathers in my final project. I included photographs, screen prints, diary entries and poems.

When I first saw the cover of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s ​ The Sympathizer​ , I thought I saw my grandfather. The concept of haunting describes how violent histories make themselves known in the present (Avery Gordon). Using the red screen prints, I wanted to visualize this haunting.

This haunting is rooted in a family history of war and migration. A painful and traumatic history told with hints of anger, sadness, and

sometimes indifference. This history is also rooted in the relationships between the men and women in my family. I have seen how love is confused with sacrifice and abuse and survival and all of the in between.

I wanted to intervene in this haunting and show that I am here too. I am my grandfather's’ intense stares, arched eyebrows, large lips, and yellow-brown skin. I am my grandfathers, but I am not my grandfathers. I tell myself this: I will not use anger as a source of motivation. I know that anger is actually a well of sadness that I fall into every single time.

I will not shrink myself to make another person feel whole.

70. Untitled Tien Tran

CHO BÀ NGOẠI: FOR GRANNY

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C

hào Bà Ngoại. It’s been over twenty-five years since you, Ông Ngoại, Dì Hằng, and Mẹ have crossed the Pacific. Do you remember the stories about the marauding pirates stopping some unfortunate boat and taking away the women to be raped? Could you imagine riding in crowded boats for months along rough waters? Our family was not a part of those Vietnamese boat people who made that trek, so we were lucky. Unable to fathom that horrible journey, I am glad that Ông Ngoại worked for the Americans in the military. That ensured the safe plane ride over the Pacific for your then family of four, but others, of course, neither possessed those connections nor the money.

Yet many came in droves; whatever could float, they used. No matter how slim the chances were, our people risked everything. Every single mile away from Việt Nam meant one step closer

after Javier Zamora

PETER TRAN

to better futures. And once you came here to Georgia, you began your new life.

After living in the land of the brave for so long, how much do you miss the motherland? I still remember the stories Mẹ would tell me of how your house in Đà Lạt was the only one with a TV. After a long day toiling in the rice fields or tending to the animals, you would invite the neighbors to watch the popular hits of your time. Even with all of that physical labor, food in Việt Nam wasn’t as plentiful as it is here in the States. Mẹ would tell me about how you would only treat her to high quality foods like meat when she felt sick because it was usually expensive. And how she used to pick rocks out of her rice because all the good rice had been exported. Here in America, we take for granted the abundance of food inside these ubiquitous Targets and Walmarts.

When I visited your quaint house in Hapeville, GA for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Tết, and Easter, the smell of vegetable oil permeated the house.

While all of us kids would scatter, you firmly stood outside sliding the egg rolls gently into the deep fryer. Having stayed up late stuffing and rolling each chả giò, you imbued each piece with a hope you had for your grandchildren.

Once all the egg rolls were gone, then came the ladling hot bowls of bún.

When you would remind me to drink up all of my soup, your deep love transcended all seas. No matter what happened outside, I could leave my problems behind. Taking my shoes off in the house meant that I entered a noisy haven.

We, your grandchildren, would run and yell to and from the children’s room, the adults would talk politics or the economy, and the sizzling on the stove added to the melodious cacophony of our family gatherings. I miss those times.

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Regardless of the attention you paid to your cooking, education was always far more important to you. Because going to university in Việt Nam was restricted to those who were wealthy, none of the adults ever went. Even since then, bribery and corruption has riddled the college application process. When Mẹ was growing up, only the rich families had the money to pay for extra English tutoring. Seeing no real future for your family, you left Việt Nam. After having landed in the land of the free, life didn’t become peachy. As a midle-aged woman, you used to work at the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport preparing meals. People would yell at you for working too slowly compared to your younger coworkers. Some Americans must have poked fun at the way you and Ông Ngoại spoke English.

Not fluent in the language, you had no way to defend yourself from their criticism, as if learning English was ever easy or quick.

The higher I progressed in my education, the more challenging school became.

But it is vital. Senior year of high school hit me hard. Mẹ probably never told you about my late nights and early mornings. When Dad would pick me up from school at 5:30 pm, I would knock out in the car ride home from exhaustion.

Many people at school saw the end result of my good grades, but what they didn’t see was what happened at home. When the work would pile up, I couldn’t stop the tears flowing down my face. As the son of immigrant parents who only ever finished high school, I felt that I had to work ten times as hard as my classmates. Although my parents pushed me, I pushed myself too, maybe even more than they did. My family’s sacrifices couldn’t be in vain. Mẹ used to come home at 10:30 pm, sometimes 11:00, and

she would still be up as early as 6:30 am to cook breakfast for me and my little sister. We have all had our fair share of hardships. However, according to one proverb, happiness will accompany pain.

Despite the hardships, those experiences taught me resilience and patience. Now, the work has paid off. In December of my senior year in high school, I got accepted into my top university. Reading my acceptance letter, I didn’t jump up for joy. I still couldn’t believe the words “Welcome to the Class of 2022.”

Getting into a school like this seemed only possible for geniuses. I never thought of myself as being incredibly talented; I lacked musical or innovative skills. However, I was familiar with grit. Thanks to God’s grace, I will be the first person in our family to go to college. This is no ordinary university. I am so proud to be attending Yale University.

My future belongs in my hands.

Nevertheless, it’s still nerve-wracking thinking about moving to a place where Asian Americans haven’t always been represented. Yale’s elitist heritage is alienating sometimes. Many students come from rich families who can afford boarding schools. Several have already done and published research. People in general seem to have their lives all in order, what with all the extracurriculars they do and leadership positions they hold. For me at least, the adjustment continues to be difficult. I have days when I feel confident in myself and nights when homesickness and academic stress make me question my time as a student here. When I walk around campus, I see few Southeast Asian faces. In the faculty, few Vietnamese professors hold positions. On top of all that, I carry on my shoulders the aspirations of my entire family. As the first in the family to

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go to college, I must serve as a model example for the other kids. Nevertheless, I have actively sought spaces where I can belong. The Asian American Cultural Center proved to be a necessary home away from home. There, I have cooked phở with the Vietnamese Students Association, watched girls dressed in áo dài at the cultural show, and listened to an alumnus speak about his experiences in Việt Nam. At first, I worried that I wouldn’t find a strong Vietnamese community. However, the Vietnamese people I have met affirm that I do belong here. I have come here to make my mark.

As you may have long noticed by now, this letter is nearly all written in English.

Although you would have preferred it to be in Vietnamese, I have not always been comfortable in my native tongue. The Cheyenne and Arapaho author Tommy Orange writes in his book There There that learning about one’s heritage is not something all of us can afford. Looking back, I wished that Mom and Dad had never taken me out of Vietnamese language classes. If only I had stayed there longer, I don’t think that I would’ve embarrassed you. Believing that knowing a few words and phrases sufficed, my younger self had grown idle. When I eat at your table, I wish that I could say more to you and Ông Ngoại, rather than eat in shameful silence. I have come to realize that speaking one’s native language represents the greatest sign of pride in one’s culture. Not wanting my mother tongue to slip through my grasp, I cling to Vietnamese. You may have heard this narrative told a thousand times in America: immigrants have to assimilate. However, we don’t have to forget our roots. As a Vietnamese American young man, I straddle two worlds. With some effort, I will salvage and restore my mother tongue.

Despite a lack in Vietnamese fluency, I will never forget my heritage and roots.

So many years spent in America have not washed away the Northern Red River soil that courses through our veins.

Mẹ always told me that our family originated in miền Bắc. Dyed red with the blood of heroes and heroines throughout history, the soil has given birth and fed our brave and resilient people. Over the centuries, different groups have tried to make us sway to their bidding.

But never once have our spirits been snapped. Past legendary people such as

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Trần Hưng Đạo, the Trưng sisters, and Lý Thường Kiệt inspire me to use my ability to work for the good of others. Their strength reminds me of the courage you had to have when leaving your former life in Việt Nam for America.

Granny, you are one amazing person.

Cháu hy vọng Bà Ngoại tự hào và cháu thương Bà Ngoại nhiều lắm.

Thương Thương, Danh

asian american cultural center at yale new haven, ct

spring 2019