From the moment you step off the plane, you’re considered “in the land of your people.” But your people enjoy eating cheap fast food, not meals from the street markets down the block. Your people can’t bear humidity because it’ll ruin their hair, or would gawk at the masses flooding the streets. This supposed land of yours, home to generations of ancestors met through stories passed down, is said to be the place you’ll truly belong. But for the eyes of an American-born child, unfamiliarity lingers when passing through those wide gates into the country your parents said farewell to decades ago. A place embedded with culture you can, and never will, call home.
While the color of your skin blends with the crowds enough to not garner a second look, your distinction to those passing by marks you as a foreigner in rich ink for anyone to see. A stain accentuating the second part of that lovely term you check off, Asian-American.
American. Where your experience is influenced by too many backgrounds to count. Where your customs have been stripped to the Chinatowns and Panda Express thought to be enough for the foreigners. Where you’re left asking which side of that term you’re meant to be on. That’s the American you know.
At every turn, something tugs and snags on your senses. What is she wearing? That jumble of smells must be a spice you haven’t heard of. How did they create all these flavors? Intrigue is blissfully delightful until you notice a curious gaze from a distance. Perhaps wondering why this child with ebony hair and skin the divide from white and black, doesn’t have the slightest idea about those they share their complexion. A disconnect with an answer lost between lands.
Having no personal connection to the best shopping areas or knowledge of a restaurant’s authenticity, turning to your phone for the most popular attractions is all you can manage. No better than those taking a picture for their social media post about enjoying “exotic” Asian drinks, then lifting their chins to call the street vendors filthy. Even the simplest of things appear so different when the most you’ve known has been from the lens of western civilization on a point across the world.
The language that easily flows from the mouth of one relative to the next becomes an overwhelming source of embarrassment when the best you can do is keep your lips sealed and smile politely. Leaving a dull trace of bitter regret from never learning your native tongue, aside from the sparse bits and pieces barely enough to form a sentence, nevermind a conversation. Like wildfire, flames bloom across your face as a waiter asks a question or the shopkeeper tells you the price for a tacky souvenir. With a flood of anxiety, you ask the few English speakers for a translation of each word, a process riddled with unspoken judgement. It’s the strangest of sights for your parents to be communicating in a way rarely done when working out every syllable in a free fall of broken English, fixing them as an immigrant with a single breath. Yet here, their words neatly fit into place while yours are useless clutter without someone to bridge them together.
The sense of otherness because of your appearance and traditions is one you’re all too familiar with. But what does it mean to be a stranger to your own heritage? A homeland that’s pitted an identity you can never forget about at home, with another that seems most evident so far away. Uncertainty trails behind for you to decide if you can truly be American enough without abandonment of that Asian half. What will you become then? What are you now?
A tourist to your own land.
Biography
My name is Danica Seto and I’m a freshman student in Massachusetts. I’m an Asian-American who ironically enough plays the violin and enjoys doing math. I’m also involved in programs helping my community and have an interest in social justice issues. Writing is something I love doing to hopefully start some conversation on important topics and stir up change.
