I’m Taiwanese American, but way more American than Taiwanese. I was born and raised in Minnesota, which is about as middle America as you can get. I grew up in an extremely white suburb at a time when the motto for immigrants was the dreaded melting pot–as in, you damn well better melt into the bigger culture if you know what’s good for you. It wasn’t about mutual melting or blending or anything as warm-hearted as that. No, it was about not sticking out or seeming weird.
I didn’t love it when it moved from a melting pot to a tossed salad, though the latter was better than the former. At least the immigrants were allowed to bring something about themselves and their heritage into the equation. Still, with the tossed salad metaphor, there was the feeling that the immigrant was still the other and didn’t fit into society.
Honestly, I don’t think there’s a nice metaphor to explain the immigrant experience or to explain how they should exist in American society. I’m against labels in general, and not in a ‘no labels’ way (because that’s just pretentious twaddle), but in a ‘life is too complicated for pithy sayings’ way. Still.
Being a second-generation Taiwanese American (my parents immigrated over fifty years ago) is an interesting experience. For the most part, I don’t think about it. It’s just a part of me, but it’s not at the surface. I am much more American than Taiwanese. I value the individual more than the family (but that’s because of my very dysfunctional family. I’ll get to that in a minute); I reject that boys are more important than girls.
My whole life I was treated like I was lesser than my brother simply because of my outward gender. Several months ago, my brother said that our parents treated us differently based on our gender, and it was oddly gratifying to me. My parents would deny it until they were blue in the face in part because they both stridently uphold the patriarchy, so hearing my brother say it bluntly nearly made me cry.
My brother asked me a month ago or so if our family was dysfunctional or just Taiwanese. I told him that we were definitely Taiwanese, but also dysfunctional. The two were not mutually-exclusive, just like someone could be a minority AND an asshole.
I talk about my recent medical trauma often and I’ll mention it once again. People are amazed that I didn’t have to do rehab. I was exhausted once I left the hospital, yes, but I didn’t have much physical damage at all. The worst part of my medical trauma? Being smacked in the face with the family dysfunction. My parents moved back to Taiwan decades ago. We had an uneasy alliance in which we talked once a month or so for half an hour (my mom and I. My father and I talked for five minutes, maybe). We emailed sometimes if my mother needed something or wanted to share out-of-focus pictures.