A friend once asked me how it is like to be an Asian in America. Such a convoluted question got me thinking real hard about my identity. I ended up saying, you know, I feel that I'm at this funny place where I can kinda pick and choose what I want to be. I could be a person of color living in the United States, when I had to pick a group (either POC or white) to participate in social justice dialogues. But not util recently I started to not take that identity for granted. Never equate me with a POC born and raise in the U.S. In the past short 5 years, I only have had a tiny taste of what they would have experienced throughout their lives. Different from them being born into it, how I have gotten to this point of being able to "pretend" to be a POC in the U.S. has to do with attending a predominantly white, private, east coast, liberal arts college, where I never felt that I belonged. Instead of positioning my Chinese (nationality) identity against "American culture" to wrap my head around the suffocating sense of alienation I experienced there, I turned to my non-whiteness for the sense-making. That was the result of 1, me being a history major and being keen on a multitude of social and historical issues in the U.S.; 2, the friendship I developed with my best friend from college, who has shared with me her stories of growing up as a Latina and a daughter of a community leader/activist in the racist America; 3, the opportunities provided by CPS that has educated me on social justice issues and given me the agency to see myself as a capable person.
In short, I came to the States five years ago as a Chinese international student not having the slightest idea of what I was getting myself into. Here I am now at Stanford, being trained to be an elementary school teacher in the state of California. I have worked in segregated public schools in 21st-century America. I have been empowered by Paulo Freire and all the other educators advocating for emancipatory pedagogy. I have yet to secure myself a spot aka a long-term working opportunity, through which I could maybe begin to settle down in my Asian-ness here in America.
In short, I came to the States five years ago as a Chinese international student not having the slightest idea of what I was getting myself into. Here I am now at Stanford, being trained to be an elementary school teacher in the state of California. I have worked in segregated public schools in 21st-century America. I have been empowered by Paulo Freire and all the other educators advocating for emancipatory pedagogy. I have yet to secure myself a spot aka a long-term working opportunity, through which I could maybe begin to settle down in my Asian-ness here in America.
