jadesapphaire

[jadesapphaire]

Losing Touch with Home: a Story of Social Distancing and Assimilation 

I was staring into the oven filled with Thanksgiving turkey and sushi bakes with a tipsy Joy and a wasted Asolia when Auntie Wang called Johnason, who stayed in Chicago during the winter. “Tell your brother to call home,” she said, “it's Thanksgiving.”

 Peter, the eldest son of Auntie Wang, was in Cupertino during Thanksgiving and had taken his siblings out for dinner during his short break but refused to visit his parents. He had recently cut all ties with the family and community in Cupertino after his family insulted his fiance for being neither Chinese nor Christian.

 Experiences like this are not uncommon among Chinese American children. Around 27% percent of Asian American children have reported cutting ties with their parents and distancing themselves from the community they grew up in. I want to bring attention to two reasons that young second-generation Chinese Americans reject their origins using my personal experiences and textual evidence from bell hook’s essay “Keeping Close to Home: Class and Education”.  

When I first heard the stereotype: Asian want to be white, I thought about first-generation, middle-aged Asian American immigrants living in the Bay Area who insist on owning guns, going to church on Sundays, and passionately looking down on other minorities. But then I thought about my 14-year-old self as the only person of color competing in varsity cross-country in the whole league. Being an introverted, sensitive teenager who couldn’t speak proper English, it took the kind of courage that a young kid did not have to admit that she had no idea who Ryan Gosling was or what her friend just said to make the whole team laugh.  To better fit into the team, I chose to change my clothing style and erase the differences I had with the rest of the team in an attempt to gain acceptance from my teammates, because “Style of dress and self-presentation is most often the central marker of one's position” (61), as bell hooks write. Sadly, being both demographically and culturally a member of a  subordinate group, I and many other minorities assimilate ourselves without knowing the term. Furthermore, in my school, leadership positions or student representatives, positions that required popularity among the students and faculty never favored minority groups that diverged from the “whitewashed” image of the dominant culture. bell hooks also mentioned selective acceptance in her article, “I soon learned that the black folks who spoke on the street were likely to be part of the black community and those who carefully shifted their glance were likely to be associated with Yale” (65). For one to benefit from the resources a community offers, one has to assimilate to the community’s image to the extent of proving themselves as “respectable” in society. To feel accepted into and succeed in a white-dominant society, subordinate groups, specifically young black people in hooks’ essay “are encouraged by the dominant culture (and by those black people who internalize the values of this hegemony) to believe that assimilation is the only way to survive, to succeed” (63). As a result, it was common for Asian teenagers to often lie about their identity as they refuse to associate themselves with the Chinese communities on campus. They introduced themselves as from “Palo Alto” or even “Hong Kong,” somewhere where people are more legible for those in the western hemisphere than China. Most dominant cultures appeal to the subordinate group with their social resources and connections which subordinate groups desperately need to succeed in society. For this reason, some students often find themselves actively denying the differences between themselves and the dominant group. And in the broader scale of Chinese American immigrants, some willingly give up their cultural roots for the social capital promised by American society. 

Unlike the well-studied nature of assimilation,  the second reason that drives young Chinese Americans away from their birth community is less obvious and unique to Chinese Americans. Many Chinese Americans distance themselves from their birth community, stemming from toxic family relationships in the name of tradition. Within the Chinese American community, parents’ protectiveness of their children can often turn into controlling behaviors that damage the parent-children relationship, or in other words, a failed attempt to helicopter parenting a stressed-out teenage child. Having to suffer from the hardship of immigration, many immigrant parents often “reluctantly and skeptically supported [their] educational endeavor', and “subjected them to constant harsh and bitter critique” (61, hooks). In high school, I volunteered at a non-profit that aimed to bridge the generational and cultural gaps between second-generation East Asian students and their first-generation immigrant parents. Many of the students reported experiencing conflicts with their parents on ideas such as racism or college admissions. Most of the conflicts were filled with bitter insults and scolding toward the children who attempted to start a peaceful discussion. These experiences created a high level of psychological distress, which in turn caused the teenagers to resent their parents. 

 As the second-generation Chinese Americans grew up in a society that differs from the Chinese society that their parents grew up in, many Chinese American families experience cultural gaps between generations. To bridge both the generational gaps and the cultural gaps, “One must also honestly confront barriers that do exist, aspects of that past that do diminish” (65). However, the East Asian culture and community have historically failed in bridging the generational and cultural gaps between the younger generation of Asian Americans struggling with their identity and their ideals. The glorification of “absolute obedience” to parents in the traditional Chinese culture has often shielded verbally or physically abusive parenting methods. Meanwhile, the underrepresentation of Asian Americans in society combined with model minority stereotypes have prevented proper discourse regarding issues that require attention around family issues and individual mental health for Chinese Americans. 

The highly selective process of immigration manifested the idea of doing no wrong in life for the parents, which was then passed on to the children. However, because of these generational and cultural gaps, the younger generation often finds it hard to maintain ties with their background that they feel no sense of belonging. Parents almost always put pressure on their children to aid their conventional success. Thus, it’s often heartbreaking to see broken family relationships that stem from protectiveness and care.

The day after the lockdown lifted at Berkeley, Asolia drove up from Cupertino to take me to Walmart for some retail therapy. On the drive there, blasting Taylor Swift, she told me that she, a youth pastor, and Joy, a lifelong Christian girl from a Christian family, wanted to convert to Buddhism: “Joy and I feel like Christianity is a way that the Chinese immigrant community tries to assimilate with the dominant culture in America and we want to be more connected with our cultural roots.” I laughed knowing that there was a time I almost converted to Christianity because of peer pressure but now I carry a blessed card of Mañjuśrī everywhere like a forty-year-old Chinese uncle. As demographically speaking, the representation of Asian Americans also increased, The younger generation of Chinese Americans finds their collective identity in the U.S, and many no longer wish to fully assimilate with the white majority.  This newfound cultural identity diverges greatly from their first-generation parents, while the enlarging cultural gaps call for a conversation within the community.  

 As a Chinese student who came of age in a Chinese American context, I am always happy to be a semi-reliable source of information for those who are interested in reconnecting with their ethnic roots. Yet due to my own cultural background as an F-1 student and my own fear of being forbidden to ever set foot in my house again, I shall emphasize that this essay ONLY intends to open a much-needed scholarly discussion regarding the parent-children relationship within the Asian community. Hopefully, with more conversation regarding Asian American heritage emerging, we can create an inclusive community where everyone feels comfortable being unique. 

[jadesapphaire]

Voices in My Head

I like mumbling in my head. Don't worry, I haven't disturbed anyone because of it and I prob never will. Most of the time, those voice arises when I am blanking out. I have never gotten a proper diagnosis but apparently, it is common among those with ADHD.

When she first came to my class, she told me to write about the graveyard in my city. She is a traveling poet who happened to stop at the little town that I dwelled in.

I was in English class when she came in as my professor’s friend. She wrote a blog about a city that was lost in war, which I didn’t not read. But the moment I saw her and began hearing her story, My desire to communicate, to ask question flooded. She reminds me of Asolia, one of my dear friend from years ago when I was living in a foster family at the east bay.

In mandarins we have the saying “笼中雀” meaning, the bird that is trapped in a cage. I thought of no better words to describe me and Asolia. Two birds who wish to fly under thunder who were trapped in a iron cage of immigration and expectations.

I don’t mind becoming poor or average, but my family cannot, not after they spend so much money and expectation on their first born daughter, their sheepish, their good daughter. And immigration officials would not allow that either, a painfully average Chinese who wants nothing but to write, the lowest of lowest on the immigration tier.

Asolia was the person that I wish to be but never became.

[jadesapphaire]

Inconsistent System

In mathematics, when there is no solution because the lines are parallel, the system is called an inconsistent system. Ever since I first heard this concept in math class, I began drawing the parallel between the analogy and my life.

It is not that I lived difficult life, or I am an emotional teenage girl who thought the world was against her(I am past that age, to be honest), but rather, it is an odd feeling that I have gotten since I was little: I can detach myself from my body, and float in parallel with the body.

I am sure that psychologists have another word for my symptoms, something aligned with dissociative disorder, but I'd instead not think about it. Science takes a lot of fun out of my life. That is very ironic since I, myself, am a science student.

I'd describe myself as a painfully mediocre existence in society. If I could propose a hypothesis for my life, it would be something along the line: "when impactful changes arise in any shape or form, the symptom will neither drastically improve nor be completely destroyed". Maybe it is this unimportant and unnoticeable nature of my existence that reinforced my habit of becoming very detached from the world.

To me, I watch the events in life unfold as a painting on a canvas, stories in a second-tier novel, those that use absurd plot twists to beg the attention of readers that want nothing but a fake sense of salvation from those words. At least they are words, better than pictures, or the short video of an overedited teenage girl dancing in a clumsy way in front of the camera. But are they really better? A story that has been repeated hundreds and thousands of times, with the same plotline, same obstacle, and same group of audience that never remember, not to mention learning from the mistakes of the characters. It is pretty funny to watch the same plot happening again and again to be fair. Sometimes, I wonder, if there is a god or some gods, who are looking at the events in our realms unfold with boredom but remain entertained?

Personally, I usually don't hate my life or the world around me. There is no reason for me to hate the world, the plotline never screwed me over, even though it never favored me either. I am, simply detached. My relationship with the world is an inconsistent system, I am in parallel with the world around me. There is no solution, no purpose for my existence. How can there be a solution to my existence if there is no point of intersection at all?

I never really lived in this world. Sometimes I think I will die like this, mediocre, peaceful, and lifeless. Maybe, it is for the best.

I never really liked anything or hate anything. Sometimes, I hate people or hate an event, but, most of the time, people believe in certain beliefs carries out particular actions for a reason. Or some other time, it was my bitterness that gets me to hate the beautiful figure in a small rectangular box. But those were on me. Maybe I also am envious of the lively existence of those who are not an inconsistent system. But if one sincerely holds a belief and believes that they are not doing any harm, can one really blame them? Maybe it is the most fitting if one laughs at their actions, like how one laughs at a satirical cartoon.

But I am not really proud or loved anything or anyone. I have met many people that I loved passionately for some time, but for some reason, they have all left. Even my parents, I left home at age nine, and I have never lived with them ever since. Sometimes, it is not their fault, I simply forgot to maintain connections. Speaking of which, I really need to reply to a message from a college friend.

Before I went to college, I wanted to end my life. I am convinced that this endless cycle of trying hard to not fail, a life without purpose cannot bring light to me. But as I am here typing this paragraph, I am alive. For some reason, after days of standing in front of the mirror and crying while pinching my tummy, I am still alive. A true spectator of my own life and fate.