I’ve known since I was very young that there was something wrong with me. I wasn’t like other kids and they didn’t seem to think the way I did. I didn’t have any real friends–not the way other kids had friends. They talked about the tv shows they watched (I didn’t watch much tv) or the movies they went to (I never went to the movies) or the latest songs (I didn’t listen to music. Apocryphal story that I’ve been telling for decades. The first pop song I ever heard was Electric Avenue by Eddy Grant when I was in sixth grade.) I read in most of my free time, which was not popular to talk about.
I was fat, Taiwanese (before it was hot/sexy/in to be Asian), brainy, and had no sense of what would make me fit in. Second-generation American struggles are real, yo. I constantly felt like I was an alien in a strange world. I had no idea what I was supposed to say or do. It was a miserable experience and I became deeply depressed when I was seven. I spent the next twenty years wanting to die, but not having the guts to do it. I learned to act like a normal person, but I felt as if the rules were always changing. And, of course, what was normal for one person or group of people was not the same for others.
One thing I’ve learned in my many decades on this planet. People love to categorize other people. Maybe this is just an American thing, but I doubt it. We tend to be attracted to people who are like us. It’s human nature; I don’t begrudge that. It’s the way to know if you’re safe or not in a quick heuristic glance. But, there are limits to the heuristics, and I’m finding them not useful at all these days.
Here’s the thing. Most people are black-and-white thinkers. They are binary in their beliefs, even when it comes to ideas that don’t lend themselves to being so concrete. When we talk about racial issues, it’s always black and white. MAYBE brown thrown in for good measures from time to time, but I wouldn’t hold my breath as an Asian and forget about indigenous folks at all. We Asians came up for a hot second with the corona virus causing many people to lose their minds and start outright hating on Asians, rather than just doing it quietly. I’ve given up a long time ago about anyone caring about Asian people in America except for the quick sentence when anti-Asian violence happens.