Reaching Beyond the Mirror -- Young Asian Americans Search for a Sense of Self
By Marian Liu Youth Outlook (August 27, 1997)

As I stare in the mirror I see the almond eyes, the black hair, the olive skin. All these characteristics would logically add up to one thing: Chinese. Yet deep inside, I question this conclusion. If I am "Chinese," why am I so unsure of what that means?

Perhaps I am "American." I was born here; this country is the only home I know. But I am not accepted here. When I was little, the other school children would pull at their eyes in mockery: Japanese, raise the sides; Chinese, lower them. I used to wonder, "Why are my eyes different from theirs?"

My best friend had the skin above her eyes surgically folded. The surgery wasn't very successful, leaving two ugly maroon bruises. She used to tell everybody, "Bees attacked and stung my eyes." Much later she finally admitted it was her parents who made her have the surgery, telling her that it would make her eyes bigger and more beautiful.

Other young Asians I know have also altered themselves in an effort to look more "beautiful." Melissa, 17 and Chinese, wears blue or green contact lenses. "I just wanted it for the shock value," she says. "People have to look at you twice to make sure that they haven't gone crazy." Kim, 18, who is half Vietnamese, put dark purple highlights in her hair. "I just wanted to be different," she explains.

Some Asians even go as far as bleaching their skin. Skin bleach can cost as much as $400 for a 16 oz. bottle. It can actually melt your skin, and may cause cancer, yet some young people are willing to take the risk.

If many Asian young people feel the need to change who they are, maybe it's because their homelands are as unaccepting of them as their new homes are. Here in America, I remember an angry salesperson shouting at my mom, "You people should just go back where you come from!" Yet when we do go back to "where we came from," local people often shun us as foreigners.

When I visited Taiwan, where my parents come from, I felt like an alien from another planet. "You're not from here, are you?" one woman asked me in an accusatory tone. When I entered a store, customers would whisper behind my back, "She's an American. She can't understand Chinese," while the salespeople would plot how to rip me off. All Americans are rich, they believed, so why not exploit that wealth? One saleslady even climbed into the dressing room with me, desperate to swindle me into buying a dress.

In the face of pressures from all sides, young Asians in America struggle to carve out an identity somewhere between "fob" and "twinkie." A "fob" is one "fresh off the boat," subject to mockery by us ABC's (American-born-Chinese) for their awkward dress and imperfect English. A "twinkie" is "yellow on the outside, white on the inside"‹so assimilated that no shred of Asian heritage remains, except perhaps a last name.

To weigh in too close to either pole is to invite ridicule. By dying our hair or changing the color of our eyes, maybe we're rebelling against our limited options, trying to create a whole new culture where we can fit in: a culture that is not just Chinese, not just American, but something all its own.

But as we grow older, we look at the whitened skin, the bleached hair, the double-arched eyelids, and wonder: Who are we now? Where do we belong? Who will accept us? As second-generation immigrants in America, we have no identity but the one we've created.

As we grow older, out of the insecure teenage years, many of us start to wonder why we've turned our backs on our heritage in an effort to belong. We look in the mirror, peel away the changed exterior, and look to our past‹our collective past.

We are Chinese, and nothing we do or put on is ever going to change that. Our parents immigrated to America so we could have better opportunities, not so we could forget where we came from. We are descended from a great lineage of emperors and inventors. How can we be ashamed of who we are?

We feel shame only when we forget that being Chinese is more than the color of our hair or the shape of our eyes. It goes deeper than that, even if the surface appearance governs how people react to us. Although I understand their motives, it makes me sad to see my peers reassemble themselves just to feel part of something. We are already part of something. We are Chinese.