May is AAPI Heritage month, but it’s also a time when lots of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders can struggle with identity and their connection to culture. Whether you’re first generation or second generation, holding onto stories and traditions can be a struggle, especially in a culture where it’s not commonplace to share family history.
Lake Effect's, Jimmy Gutierrez, talks with three Asian Americans, including WUWM's Lina Tran, who’ve been outspoken about identity, to hear how they’ve connected to their roots. And what advice they might have for others.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
“I didn’t know it was something I could be proud of.”
Lina Tran: My mom is Thai and my dad is Vietnamese and we have a huge family. Like cousins on cousins on cousins. I grew up with all of them living in a small town [Fairhope] in Alabama. It was really white and my high school was really segregated. So, if people saw any Asians walking around town, they probably assumed that they were my family members. And they were probably correct. My grandparents opened a restaurant that everyone in the family worked at and we were a big part of the church. People knew our family and I felt really proud to be one of the Trans.
But [when] I think about how it was to be in that kind of family and standing out, so often I saw us on other people's terms, on white people's terms. I knew that we were different, but I didn't really understand how until I left home and was a lot older. I knew we were different, but also I didn't know that it was something that I could be proud of.
Kayla Kuo: I was born in Taiwan and grew up in Waukesha as a transracial and transnational adoptee. I didn't even think about race, or not identifying as white, until I went to college and was surrounded by so many people of color and introduced to so many different ethnicities and cultures and experiences that I had never even thought about or thought were possible for me.
I have a younger sister who's a Korean adoptee and it's so wild because growing up, people would tell us that my sister and I looked alike. Which we kind of clung to because the idea of being able to have representation, or to feel familiarity with someone else was really lovely. But now the older I get and the more I think about it, it's just like we absolutely look nothing alike. It was just that people weren't exposed to, or don't know even the minor differences between someone who is Taiwanese and someone who's Korean.
“Not having a language connection is really painful.”
Kuo: I feel like I had a lot of growing to do in terms of understanding my racial identity because of what I wasn't exposed to, even going to the Asian grocery store. I wanna get to a place where I feel like I belong and that I feel welcomed there. But still, even when I walk in, I just get easily overwhelmed with all of the different labels and all of these words that I can't read. And so for me, I think it's also letting go of this shame of not having grown up speaking Mandarin Chinese or even Taiwanese. It's a continuous process of learning how to let go of that shame and also give myself the experiences that I never had.
Tran: For me, it meant not being able to talk to my grandparents or feeling left out when my mom and aunts and cousins started speaking in Thai. Because in my family, my siblings and I didn't learn our parents' languages. But we have some cousins that did. So there was this whole spectrum of some people who have that access and some people that don't, and it felt really bad to be someone that didn’t.
The lack of language also makes it hard to access your family history. I have friends who have photos of their great, great, great-grandmother and they have stories that are passed down generation-to-generation. I barely knew my grandparents’ full names until very recently.
Finding acceptance, even in Wu-Tang
Adam Carr: As a little boy, you're interested in fighting, right?... So ninjas were appealing to me [as a half-Chinese, half-Irish kid]. And then the movies we'd watch were American Ninja and it's a white guy becoming a ninja. And then all the Asian guys are bad guys, and this one white guy is the good guy. And American Ninja 2 did not change the formula. They didn't broaden their idea of what “American” could be at all.
It took until Wu-Tang, and it quickly became apparent, they know so much more about Chinese stuff than me! At least they were watching kung fu movies where everyone was Chinese. And Wu-Tang was like, yeah, you can like that too. And I was like, oh, interesting.
Culture was a contact sport at [Milwaukee Public Schools]. I [grew] up in super multicultural environments where it was also like, I wanna know these cultures' weak points, and by that, I mean, what are the stereotypes? So here's my choice: do I learn to take it from someone, or do I learn to get out ahead of the ribs? Like, my mom does not have an accent but I'm sure in high school she did when it was worth getting some laughs. Which, it's regrettable in retrospect, but it's like, oh, I could claim those.
Kuo: When I was in eighth grade, or [a] freshman, books became a way to escape reality and to follow these fun, magical adventures of friendship and the possibilities of what could be. And so Harry Potter was my opening into my deep love for books and that thread of why I want to read, which is often coming back to reading for pleasure and like reading, to learn and to understand.
It wasn't until after college that I finally had time to read again for fun. But when I was on this consistent journey of de-centering whiteness, I realized that a lot of the books that I was reading were either written by white authors and or featured white, straight protagonists. So it was really important for me to get away from that or to realize that there's this whole other world that exists. And so I started my “bookstagram” almost three years ago now and that was a way specifically for me to be more intentional about finding more Asian and Asian American authors and not only supporting them but also finding myself in these stories.
“In the absence of language, we have food.”
Carr: What our family calls chow mein is not what you order on a restaurant menu. It isn't like noodles that are sort of crusty, and then you get them in sauce, and then they soften up, and they can be very nice. These are kind of twice-fried noodles that have a special sauce. It's kind of derived from soy sauce. And my mom would make them for the most special occasion, or maybe like once or twice a year. There were five [siblings] of us so it could be for birthdays. And if you got it for your birthday everyone else was mad, but you'd still eat the chow mein.
The next day, we're a sleepy family, [but] we would wake up as early as we possibly could to eat that chow mein because it would not make it to noon, it would not make it to lunch. If chow mein made it to lunch it's because some of the family was out of the house. But chow mein was just like, my eyes just got big thinking about it. It would be smoky and hot, and to do it in summer, it'd be all sweaty. But the chow mein feels like where I'm from. I didn't really know where I was from, but I could eat some noodles and feel good.
Tran: I mean for a lot of us, in the absence of language, you know, we have food. It helps me feel connected to my grandparents when I couldn't really communicate with them. My grandfather, we called him, Ông, he passed away a few years ago. His younger brother's entire family came to town for the funeral. This was like a 20-person branch of the family that we didn't know that well... They just seemed more Vietnamese than us in this really hardcore way that was cool.
Before the funeral, they cooked us this huge pot of bún bò Huế. It was like a pot that you could fit a small child into. It was so big. It's this spicy, lemongrass noodle soup. It was so amazing. They took over the entire kitchen. They put newspapers on my parents’ floor so that they wouldn't spill or make a mess. They were all like squatting on the floor and cleaning out the herbs for our soup. And it was crazy. It was like seeing this alternate universe of what our family could have been. It was festive and beautiful and I felt connected to them. But at the same time, I was like, part of this is unfamiliar. So at the same time that there is connection, you're feeling the absence of something too.
“I guess I would tell my younger self…”
Kuo: Give yourself permission to do all of the things or all of the experiences that you were denied and to be open to possibilities. For me, the experiences that I'm giving myself are being able to learn Mandarin. Later this year, I'm going to be visiting Taiwan for the first time since I was adopted at four months old, which is both very exciting and thrilling and anxiety-inducing.
But also, things that don't necessarily cost money [like] being able to go to the library. I've read and checked out so many children's books, specifically children's books that had more Asian and Chinese protagonists or characters. Also, as I started learning Mandarin, I’m checking out bilingual books and being like, hmm, maybe these were things that my adoptive parents could have read with me. And having those tools has been really helpful.
Carr: Get into Wu-Tang sooner, as soon as you can. Young Adam, get Wu-Tang into your life. I'd actually say you're doing good. I'm proud of you.
Tran: Get comfortable with the discomfort and learn to poke at some of this messiness earlier. I feel like me and my parents have kind of started talking about this more recently, but we could have used the practice. I wish I had started earlier.
***
Kayla Kuo’s recommended reading list:
- Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
- All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
- The Leavers by Lisa Ko
- Adoptee Book Stack
- Books To Learn About Lunar New Year
- Her blog, Explore the Mundane
Her local (and non local) recommendations:
- Ping Pong Book Club (a reading group for AAPI by AAPI; bi-weekly meetings at Woodland Pattern)
- Milwaukee Chinese Culture & Language Services
- Soapberry Review (literary journal for reviews of Asian American literature)
- Yu & Me Books (female Asian-American bookstore based in NYC)
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