american culture
i grew up in places that were extremely asian. my high school was 70% asian and my undergrad was similar. the only times i experienced normal demographic america was when my family went on vacations. but since we were on vacation way less than at home, i thought asian american communities were america.
it wasn’t until i started going to see more theater and got deeper into film and art that i started to realize how culturally different actual america is from asian american america. during my senior year of undergrad, i told myself that if i ever want to succeed in art in america, i’ll have to first immerse myself outside the asian american community. so i moved to arizona.
going from very east asian american communities to being around no other east asians for months on end is a very stark change. i always wondered what the one white kid in my english class of all asians felt, and its like i’m finally getting a taste of what being the only person who looks like something feels like.
i remember reading about rosa parks and martin luther king and civil rights movement leaders and not really internalizing what prejudice felt like because everyone around me looked the same. but when everyone around me were people who talked differently from me and had a different childhood, i begin to wonder what i could do to fit in with people i may never fully understand.
when i go back home to california i get reverse culture shock. i sit at dinners, bewildered by the normalcy of delaying joys in life. i space out in conversations where happiness, joy, and wonder are never brought up. i observe my friends follow the footsteps of our parents, never truly finding joy in anything, repeating the same gossip about their high school classmates and communities they grew up in. i wonder if i’m the odd one out, leaving somewhere so familiar for a place where i may never belong.
i was taking an acting class this semester in the local community college’s black box theater. a few weeks into the class, i realized how bad i am at “being american.” acting was hard not because of acting, but because i didn’t know how to connect to others that didn’t understand me. it’s not natural explaining who you are when you never had to before.
i’m absolutely terrible at small talk, reading subtle gestures and facial cues, and find it extremely unnatural to express any form of extreme emotion. at first i thought there was something wrong with me (which there might be), but what i realized was that it was unnatural for me to express those emotions because others around me growing up didn’t either.1 i started wondering why my emotions are so subdued and what i could do to feel them stronger. the only way to get better at expressing those emotions has to be to feel them in the first place.
i started watching more movies, and realized that east asian movies express emotions in a much quieter way. it’s a lot less words and a lot more actions and staring at each other. i relate to this a lot more. i relate in the same way as when i started putting on asian makeup instead of trying to copy the american style of makeup. it simply felt more natural and looked better on me.
these days i’ve been embracing chinese culture more. i got a chinese painting book and have been inspired by the impressionistic style of the artwork. i got a knotting book and felt nostalgia looking at the chinese button knot. the knotted keychains brought me back to the stands in tourist shops all over china. i’m inspired looking at 1920’s shanghai clothing styles.
it’s freeing to finally accept the parts of myself i was ashamed of for so long. i realized that if i welcome who i am with open arms, i can more freely fuse it with the parts i like about american culture, and it would be uniquely me. i used to think becoming american meant letting go of being chinese, but i’m finally starting to realize that i can be both because they are both part of who i am.
i’m also starting to realize that on a broader geopolitical level, tensions come from not understanding the way another culture expresses emotions