One conversation during my first week at the CAUSE Leadership Academy sparked an epiphany of how my identity fit within the diaspora of narratives within the Asian American community. During the entire lunch portion of the networking event on Friday, I spoke to Benjamin Tran, a former CLA intern who now works at Asian Americans Advancing Justice. It was shocking how similar our backgrounds were and how my career aspirations blended with his.
We both talked about the mixture of Chinese and Vietnamese cultures growing up. Both my parents grew up ethnically Chinese in Vietnam and escaped to the United States in their teens during the Vietnam War. Therefore, I grew up with strong influences of Vietnamese and Chinese cultures, foods, and traditions. It was typical for me to hear my parents speak Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mandarin, and English all in one conversation to each other. As a kid, I would even blur the lines between what Chinese and Vietnamese food was as my parents never formally told me the difference. When people now ask what ethnicity I am, I always feel at a crossroad as it’s never that simple. I shared to Ben how it felt odd only telling people that I was Chinese-American without saying anything about growing up with Vietnamese influences. But it also wouldn’t make sense to me to identify as Chinese-Vietnamese as I am not ethnically Vietnamese. Ultimately, I end up saying that I am Chinese-American and quickly explain how I also grew up with Vietnamese culture. However, it often feels awkward explaining my background as it is never as simple as filling in the “Which ethnicity are you?” check mark box.
This factor added onto growing up in San Gabriel Valley all my life created a unique Asian American experience that I didn’t realize until after my first year of college. San Gabriel Valley is an unofficial Asian enclave itself, making both my cultures accessible to me. Ben and I talked about how typical stories, such as being teased for bringing ethnic food at lunch, wasn’t something that happened to us or many of my friends of color. I wasn’t even aware of such occurrences until later in late middle school/early high school when I was exposed to such stories online. When I moved to New York for college, however, despite the city being diverse, there were clear times that reminded me that my childhood Asian American experience was not the norm. Whether it's being a minority at a PWI or simply remembering to stay in the middle instead of the edge of a subway platform for my safety, it was a foreign experience from the one I knew as a kid. I even shared to Ben how I had a conversation with a substitute teacher while volunteering at an immigrant-youth high school in Brooklyn. He politely asked my ethnicity and shared that he picked up some Cantonese while working at a school in Chinatown, and later came up to me and said “hello” in Cantonese in a jokingly and “relatable” manner. It was off-putting as I rarely experienced moments like that back home. Ben coined it as the “SGV culture shock” and shared that many of his friends also experienced that revelation.
It was comforting to talk to Ben as I never had the chance to talk to someone who I related so much to both personally and professionally. It felt like I was talking to a version of myself who was just older and more knowledgeable than me. Having the opportunity to talk to Ben made me realize how unique my Asian American identity was and how it fits within the larger narrative of our community. While I now realize how impactful being surrounded and supported by those who looked like me growing up, I hope to create and improve similar spaces for my community to learn from and explore the diaspora within Asian America.