Looks like an Asian, Is Chinese but “White Washed”, But is American But Feels Like…

I don’t really know how to qualify or quantify myself and I hate the fact I even consider it. I think about it because of the recent developments in my intimate personal life that have caused a significant rift between me and the guy I have unfortunately been in love with…He is Punjabi from India. He told me that we were too “different” and often remarked that he wanted to date and marry someone who was Indian, because well..it is easier and he wanted someone who he could speak Hindi with. He is considering moving back to India and recently left me again, for approximately the third or so time since January citing “confusion.” (If you’re wondering why I stayed, before you judge or wonder what kind of feminist I am or person for that matter…it’s another story, another post.)

It just prompted me to think: where do I belong? Where do I fit?

He often complained vehemently about racism in America and how he felt like he was marginalized and did not fit in. I totally sympathized and believed him…However…I am an American but I don’t even feel like I gel with any particular crowd. As I have said before, while I am a monoracial person and I was made in China…I’m 100% Chinese (ethnically) I envied the fact he could straddle two worlds: the U.S. AND India. He has a choice and has people who will accept him.

I am fortunate, I have friends and I do have family. But even among these circles, it is the mixed race friends or fellow monoracial allies that I am closest to. I have one friend in particular who “gets” it. It is hard because that friend of mine is black, white, Asian, Native and Latino…She often jokes that there is no part of her you can’t offend. My mom is white and my dad is American born Chinese American, I also often am mistaken for being happa due to fact I:

• can’t speak Mandarin
• have freckles
• have brown hair and brown eyes

I am ethnically Chinese, nationally American, but my personal identity is always in a state of flux and is questioned due to the fact I look the way I look, I speak the way I speak.
I just don’t really fit in with a Asian crowd or a white crowd. I often feel alienated among the sides of the families and the extended networks of family friends on either side. Asians and whites alike often scrutinize or try their hardest to relate to me because…they can’t. I’m adopted and well…American language and culture was something I had no choice but to adopt in order to survive. There was no role model or tutor or mentor who could teach me Mandarin.

It wasn’t as if my parents didn’t try. Chinese accuse my mom of holding me back (my Chineseness) but it isn’t true. Today I went on a bike ride with my parents and we passed my old Chinese school. The first of several that I attended over the course of about 7 years of so. This one I was at for 4 years. It was traumatic. I rode past and wished I saw it burning or being bulldozed. I was tortured there. Taunted there. The teachers turned a blind eye to the merciless bullying I endured.
I’ll never forget the way I was treated and how it beat the will to learn Chinese out of me. I associate Mandarin with the cut that ran the span of my arm, so long that it required three bandaids because some kids pushed me through a thorn bush; the “candy” I was given that turned out to be empty wrappers that had been puffed up and resealed as jokes; the way a girl tried to play Cat’s Cradle when she pulled the floss so tight it punctured me.

As I got older I wished I learned Mandarin. I’m 22 now and I wish I was trilingual. I do not have a knack for math, science or languages but I managed to persevere in math and science in college with B’s. But Mandarin…I am still too scared. Language is a form of resistance, it is also a part of one’s identity.

Although I feel so offended and hurt that my ex left me because of our “differences” and because he could not handle the stress of an interracial relationship, opting for the ease of someone culturally and linguistically identical…I get it. How nice it must be. To fit in.
My Gam Gam asked me the other day, “What about Chinese guys?” We were talking about dating and relationships. As one of her favorite granddaughters I think she is hoping that do right unlike my dad and marry someone who is the same as me. How can I explain to her there will never be anyone “the same as me”? Chinese is not the same as me. Because…Even my ex said I wasn’t really Chinese. He said I was just American, as if “American” is an ethnicity like the nationality…Well in India it is the same…but not the same.

I really don’t want to have to prove to anyone that I am Chinese. Or how much more Chinese I am or protest that I am not white washed or trying to be “white.” I don’t want to be only seen as a “Chinese” or exotic pretty Asian girl by whites or any body else. I don’t want to explain why my mom is white and my dad is Chinese or why I don’t really look like them or my sister.
The family I wound up with doesn’t exoticize me or fetishize me or get me to prove that I’m an American or that I’m Chinese. I’m lucky. The friends that I’ve chosen to be my family, I hope I never lose them because it is with them that I want to spend my life now that my dream in my ex has dried up like a raisin in the sun.