Read an Excerpt
INTRODUCTION: "WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE ASIAN AMERICAN?"
When I was in my twenties, I attended a weeklong study program in Birmingham, Alabama, to learn about the Civil Rights Movement. I was teaching history at a public high school in San Jose, California, at the time, and I was excited to visit the Deep South to get a closer understanding of a movement I had only read about in books. The program began with an evening check-in where I quickly mingled with a few of the other teachers who had also flown in from all over the country. The next morning, I woke up tired and jet-lagged. Getting up for an early breakfast on Alabama time was painful for this Californian. As I groggily walked through the cafeteria and grabbed my breakfast, I blinked heavily when I approached the cafeteria tables where my fellow teachers were finding their seats. Even out of my bleary eyes, I noticed a pattern unfolding before me: The white teachers, who were in the majority, were all sitting at one long table. The Black teachers, who were fewer in number, were all sitting at a different table next to it. It was then that I realized that I was, in fact, the only Asian American person there.
At this point in my life, being the only Asian American in the room was a new experience for me because I am a Bay Area Asian. I have lived my whole life in the various Asian enclaves of the San Francisco Bay Area. Up until my time in that Birmingham cafeteria, I had never been presented with such a stark racial choice: Do I sit at the white table or the Black table? The first morning I sat at the white table because it had the most people. I figured I should just go with the majority. A few minutes after sitting down, however, I regretted my choice. I admit that I was already grumpy from having to wake up so early, but the vibe at the white table was unnerving to me first thing in the morning. Everyone was so talkative and cheery in a way that felt saccharine and superficial. They kept trying to get me to join them in chit-chatty small talk when all I wanted to do was eat my food in peace.
The next morning at breakfast I walked over to the Black table and asked if I could sit with them. They were happy to welcome me, but sitting at the Black table was different too. Many of them taught in predominantly Black, under-resourced schools, and as they talked about their teaching lives, it was hard for me to relate to their experiences. I, on the other hand, taught at a majority Asian American suburban school that was often listed in the top one hundred public high schools in the country. My job felt so cushy in comparison. The rest of the week I continued sitting at the Black table, but I did not necessarily feel like I fit in. I mostly sat and ate quietly while listening to them talk to each other; I didn’t know how to interact with them in a way that felt natural to me. Sometimes in my discomfort, I would wonder if I should go back and sit at the white table where, even though it was kind of annoying, it felt more familiar. Eventually my thoughts would clarify and I would tell myself to stay put, thinking, "At least at the Black table, I don’t have to pretend to be white."
MAKE IT MAKE SENSE
Let’s be honest, being Asian American is confusing. Like my experience of choosing a table in that Birmingham cafeteria, sometimes we just don’t know where we fit. Was I supposed to sit at the white table or the Black table? And if I chose either, would I be able to be myself? I could have sat at my own table, but would that mean that I’d have to sit alone? When I returned home, my confusion grew deeper. I had such a moving experience learning about the Civil Rights Movement that helped me deepen my commitment to fighting racial injustice, but what did being an isolated Asian in Birmingham have to do with being a comfortable Asian in the Bay Area? Was there anything to connect these experiences together? What did it mean to be Asian American?
This book is a collection of ideas and frameworks to help us make better sense of what we experience as people of Asian descent living in the United States. For myself, I needed to embark on a personal journey to search for answers that often took years to reveal themselves. I cannot overstate how much time and energy it has taken me on a daily basis to make sense of these experiences, efforts that I often did not recognize because I have never known a different existence. At the heart of it, I just wanted to understand my life. In order to find clarity, I needed to dig into my racial identity. I hope that by sharing these concepts with you, it might bring some clarity into your own journey as a fellow Asian American.
When you begin interrogating your Asian American identity, you will notice something very quickly: there is not a lot out there for Asian Americans. Most resources that talk about race are about being Black or white. Resources about being Asian American do exist, but it can feel like they are scattered everywhere in little bits and chunks that you have to slowly excavate and put together on your own. It takes a lot of effort, energy, and expertise to make sense of it all. I’ve often wished that someone would plop a simple roadmap into my hand to help me navigate my confusion and give me a sense of direction. I was lucky enough to learn more about Asian American history and read books and essays by Asian American authors, but even after finding these precious gems, I always felt there was still something missing. I was looking for something that moved beyond history and people’s personal experiences and that talked specifically about race. What does it mean to be Asian American? Sometimes I would come across the work of Asian American academics who published their research, but I’m not an academic, and honestly, I don’t want to spend my free time reading someone’s Ph.D. dissertation. After many years of searching for something clear and approachable, I realized I might as well make the effort myself. So here we are with this book.
This is not a how-to book or a book of complete answers. This book is like a map in progress. Like a cartographer, I am charting down what I have seen, experienced, and understood from studying history, talking to other Asian Americans, reflecting on my own experiences, and learning from other people of color. I know that this map is far from complete, and as I journey more, I will add and revise. I share it with you because I hope that seeing my map might help you recognize where you are, understanding that there will be ways our maps will both overlap and diverge. Like I mentioned before, I am from the suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area, South Bay and Peninsula specifically. I’m also female, straight, cisgendered, and the daughter of highly educated Taiwanese immigrants. I am a monoracial East Asian. I am middle class. There are many aspects of the Asian American experience that I cannot speak authoritatively on. It would be impossible for this one book to fully and adequately represent the glorious diversity of the entire Asian American community.
In this book I have attempted to be inclusive of diverse Asian American backgrounds, but I suspect I will have an unintentionally biased perspective that overrepresents middle-class, suburban East Asian women who are the children of immigrants because that’s who I am, and I cannot delete my personal lens as the writer of this book. I hope you will find yourself in these pages, but I also understand that there will be times that many of you will not. When this happens, I hope that you will feel empowered to add onto this map the things you encounter that I am unable to explore. Because being Asian American isn’t just about me, it’s about us. My hope is that we can collaboratively create a deeper understanding of what it means to be Asian American and that we can pass these maps down to those who travel this road after us. Let’s journey together.
