Most people who know a little bit about me know that I am adopted from China. I am pretty open about that fact and at home almost everyone knows about it. This has caused me to sometimes forget newer acquaintances don’t know that about me. It was something I grew up knowing but never quite understanding. My parents have been very open with me about my adoption since I was a kid, but back then I didn’t understand what it meant. I was adopted. Yes. I am Chinese. Yes. But those identities were both me and yet not me. My parents enrolled me in Chinese school since I was 4 years old and I met other Chinese adoptees and Chinese-Vietnamese kids, but that was only for an hour and a half of my Saturday. All my time spent outside of class was in a predominately white town with white parents. Growing up I didn’t understand why I didn’t fit in with the other kids at school. I did the same things as them yet I wasn’t like them. What made me so different? I later learned I would never be one of them because I was not like them. In middle school I started to discover the Asian community and learned there’s so many Asian ethnicities out there. I made more friends who I could identify with and found that being Asian can be cool. I not only started learning about my identity but also started being comfortable with it. My middle name happens to be my Chinese name and I used to go by that in elementary school. But I got tired of all the stereotyping, judgements, and mispronunciation that came with it so I switched to my first name, my English name. There’s so many different Asian-American experiences out there and being from an interracial adoption is a whole different story. I love hearing about my adoption from my mom and what I was like at a really young age. There’s a lot of funny stories in there but there’s also a lot of pain. There’s struggles with being Asian-American but being an interracial adoptee is a whole new game. I started out really proud of my Chinese heritage but slowly became ashamed of it in a way. Only recently have I started being confident with my Asian identity, but I have a way to go before I can reclaim my Chinese heritage. The sorority was the first space where I’ve felt comfortable being Chinese-American in a long time but to the general public I still like to be ambiguously Asian. If I ever go back to China I think it would have to be a solo trip for self discovery. Maybe that’ll be a story to share another time.
Written by Abigail "Lunarto" Loftin
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