I’m Asian. More than that, I am Vietnamese. But actually, I’m more Chinese by blood than Vietnamese, but I genuinely often forget about this fact. Tied in with all of this, I am American.
My racial identity has always brought me frustration and confusion. I was born in Los Angeles
and moved to Iowa when I was 8. You would think that at that age, race wouldn’t mean anything to me, but it did. The fact that I was the only colored girl in my third grade Iowan classroom was not lost on me.
And I never forgot. I was never allowed to forget. I still vividly remember my elementary classmates calling me “flat-face” and making fun of my “unibrow.” I began waxing my eyebrows in fifth grade and have never stopped since.
I was labeled the weird “ching chong” Asian girl in a sea of white.
But let’s flip the switch—the spring of 2015, I went on a sudden trip. It was a Friday night and I had just gotten home from a long day at work, smelling of sweat and Chinese food. I was ready to let down my pony tail, jump in the shower, and finally eat my own dinner, but instead, my dad asked me a question: “Our relatives in Vietnam called me today. Your grandma is sick. We’re flying out to Vietnam tomorrow. Do you want to go?”
It was my junior year of high school. AP exams were coming up soon and I had dance and speech competitions lined up. But I put aside everything and went, because she was my grandma—the woman who raised my brother and me for half of our lives.
Long story short, my grandma ended up recovering, but the trip was not without pain. Besides my grandma being ill, I had been thrown into somewhat of a culture shock. I hadn’t seen my relatives in almost ten years at this point—the last time I saw them, I was too young to realize how different their Vietnamese values were from my own American ones. It also didn’t help that I barely spoke a word of Vietnamese; feelings of shame overwhelmed me, made only worse by the fact that I couldn’t even talk to anyone about it.
So now I was too American.
So which one was it? What was I? Who was I? Would I ever fit in anywhere? Was I just too much?
These are things I still struggle with today. It’s been four years since I took that trip and my grandma has long since passed away. I miss you, bà nội.
I’m the President of the Vietnamese Student Association now. I’m a member of the Asian Student Union, and now a Sister in an Asian-interest sorority. Every day, everything I do is painted with a film of my Asian—but also American—identity.
It’s weird being the President of an ethnicity-specific organization, because now I’m the face of it. You would think that the president would know all there is to know about the organization and the culture they are representing, but the funny thing is, among my executive board, I’m the one who knows the absolute least about Vietnamese traditions and customs. But that doesn’t stop me from going for my own goals, and I learn more about my Vietnamese identity every day.
So I’m Asian. More specifically, I’m Vietnamese, and before I forget again, I’m also Chinese. But my identity isn’t completed without the word after the hyphen—American. No matter where I go, no one ever lets me forget either side of this one, seemingly all-encompassing label, “Asian-American.” I don’t quite fit in anywhere I go. I don’t quite understand fully any side of my racial identity. But at the end of the day, I’m learning, I’m growing, and it’s okay to be different.
Written by Jacquelyn "Luana" Huynh