Dear Grandpa and Grandma,
How did you do it? How did you pave this road for your family, for your people? How did you stay silent when anger is so justified? What shame did you feel? How did you suffer? How could you not be hurt by the country you belonged to-the only country you knew? How did you lug that one suitcase-everything you could carry?
What if I let you down? What if I mess up everything- everything you worked so hard to achieve? I've gotten good at acting white- adapting the way I act so they wouldn't notice that I'm different, so they think I belong, so they could have a good opinion of us.
But now I'm being told to embrace who I am. Stop adapting, start sharing. They tell me that God made us specifically this way. Asian. But something inside me hurts to think this way. It unravels everything you did!
Would you be proud of me if I were to fully embody being Japanese, Chinese? Would you want me to embrace this culture? Or would you be afraid too? Afraid I'll be rejected or labeled. Afraid people won't love me for who I am. Afraid that it's still too soon.
This summer, a white man asked me how I learned to speak English so well. How did I learn to speak English so well?! My grandparents and great grandma were born here. My family has been here for 120+ years. Both my grandparents fought for this country in WWII. My parents only speak English. I am on avg 3rd generation. I was born here. I grew up here. I've been to China once. Japan zero. I root for USA in the Olympics. I am a natural born American citizen. So how did I learn to speak English so well?...
Maybe wait another 120 more years.
