My college self would be horrified at the goal I have decided to set for myself: to write about an Asian American experience through fiction. She would call her future self a failure instead of looking past it that it shouldn't matter she had a name that was constantly spelled wrong. She would be disgusted -- like the time she relented to write a Chinese retelling of the New Year's monster that her professor ate up because it was new, original, and practically “foreign” to them. You are destroying thousand year old stories just for an A.
At the same time she'd also be horrified that her future self would wear less black and more pink lacy dresses.
I'm older now, which is terrifying. The desire to connect to an Asian identity has been repressed so long and tearing, clawing itself to be let out. It's guilt. Guilt from choosing Saturday Morning cartoons than learning Cantonese. Guilt from being afraid to go to the non-English parts of Chinatown. Guilt that I may be losing what little Asian identity I have. More American than Asian.
Ultimately I'm like everyone else - I want to relate to another's experiences. I want to know there is someone else in the world feels and experiences what I do.
Fresh off the Boat premieres tonight. And the anticipation I felt for this was similar to that elementary school girl who clung to a neighbor's VHS of Flower Drum Song – only relenting to let it go the very day they were moving. Or the 6th grader who found a crumbling copy of Jade Snow Wong's Fifth Chinese Daughter and found the character's experience similar to her own. That she was not alone. Someone else felt the same back-breaking familial pressure to succeed and was one of the failures who could not live up to expectations.
I read the book. I even read the New York Magazine. Even if this is a flop it is the something that Asian Americans want to others to know: that I'm not exaggerating the harsh discipline, the odd cultural nuances, and the deep desire to simply belong ingrained into every man, woman, and child. This is where I come from.
