I'm Yellow

Partly out of laziness, and partly to celebrate the end of another Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (APAHM), I present an essay I wrote last year in applying for a scholarship sponsored by the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA). My heritage has been something I have always grappled with, both the good and the bad, but in writing this essay, I really explored and determined what being Asian-American has really meant to me and how I have developed into the person I am; reading popular literature, watching popular television and movies, listening to popular radio--I am always struck by how little representation there is on behalf of Asian-Americans, and that's a real shame. For not only the Asian-American community, but for the larger American community, I am really grateful to the OCA for providing me the opportunity last year to really elucidate on youth, on history, and on growth:

As part of the age class commonly known as Generation Y, I am pampered by excess, nurtured by technology, and in general, different.  Social scientists categorize me, and my fellow members of the “Millenials,” as possessing a feeling of entitlement wholly unknown to the generations before: we expect—and feel entitled to—a wealthy, instantaneously gratifying lifestyle of mentally invigorating work and easily accessible leisure.  Attending college is no longer symbolic of being gifted, but another expectation for us to meet.

As an Asian-American and having a cultural background of high expectations, attending college—specifically, and stereotypically, Ivy League—has been the milieu of my past fourteen years being educated.  My own parents did not set my life before me at the beginning of my academic journey, but growing up as an ABC (American-born Chinese), I was nonetheless sucked into the mindset that I would eventually grow up, finish high school, go to college, go to medical school (or law school or engineering school), and live the rest of my life as a some kind of professional.

The manufactured dream ended when I was nine and in fourth grade, the first year schoolteachers gave us letter grades instead of checks and pluses.  I opened the envelope on the bus ride home, anxiously excited to see the beginnings of a wonderful future as the bus rumbled through the neighborhood; the As, in Mathematics and Reading and Social Studies excited me, especially the A+ next to the Math.  I had an A- in English, but that was livable.  Workable.  Improvable.  But the B+ in science?

I was an absolute disgrace; how was I supposed to get into Harvard with a B in science, of all subjects?  My mouth was dry, my legs trembled, my head spun—really, it did—and I knew then that I would never be a doctor or an engineer or a pharmacist.  I couldn’t.  I had a B+.  No, no no no no.

To be pithy, I got over it.  Retrospectively, ruling out those three occupations prematurely has led me to go beyond the bounds of expectation.  I have met my parents’ basic expectations, which have become my own: high standardized test scores, high GPA, and a schedule filled with academically challenging classes.  I have also defied their inherent demands of me to pursue my own visions: instead of participating in Science Olympiad, I have done labor—physical, not mental—in building a school in Nicaragua.  Instead of becoming a piano prodigy, I quit my lessons to become competent on the viola, and instead of pursuing mathematics—the one fourth grade subject I was “outstanding” in—I quit the Mathletes to begin, and never finish, writing seven books.

Being an Asian-American has, must frustratingly, placed me within a category to which I do not wish to conform.  My parents and my culture, even my appearance, bring about stereotype and discrimination; conversely, those very same aspects have given me the necessities to which I can pursue any path of my choosing wholeheartedly, even rebellion.  I am a confident, competent, cultured and conscious girl—I’m still seventeen—and soon I will be a confident, competent, cultured and conscious collegiate.

I could say all that confidence, competence, culture and conscience are intrinsic, but my heritage has taught me to be humble; who I am, and who my peers are, has been wholly crafted by our ethnicity, whether in acceptance or defiance of the expectations placed on us by the community, and recognition and appreciation of my roots is the slow product of maturation.  By cultural standards, comprehension should be instantaneous and credit given where credit due; by reality’s course, people are obtuse and slow to realize value.  I’ll assist them.