Well, obviously my essay is far from perfect. It’s a generic “who are you” type essay. I’m planning to send this out by tomorrow, so I need any advice, critique, etc. Thanks
<pre><code> My friends and I were assembling teams for a pickup basketball game at the park when I heard the statement. Weve got our white boy team set, a friend of mine said, before adding, Oh yeah, and Kevin too. The comment seemed innocent enough, yet something about the way it was said made me uneasy. Looking at the smiling faces of my friends around me, I got the sense that I didnt belong. I wasnt a part of the white boys. I had been put in a separate group, a metaphorical asterisk placed next to my name.
Where are you from? Ive been asked this question all my life. Parents, teachers, my classmates, friends, even cashiers at fast food joints, they all had to ask me this question. Yet, even when they asked me where I was from, their curious faces seemed more to be asking, Why dont you have an accent? Why are your friends white? Why are you not like all the other Asians that we know?
My elementary school was in a predominately white neighborhood, and naturally, the students attending the school were mostly white. Like all little kids, I wanted to be well liked, to be a part of a group, to blend in with the other kids. The few Asian kids that I knew in the school were made fun of, laughed at because they spoke with accents and were in ESL. I wanted to make sure I wasnt associated with these Asians in any way. I stopped speaking in Chinese to my parents. My Asian accent gradually vanished. I had blended in with the children at the school. I was, in my own eyes, an American. Yet, my Asian characteristics betrayed me. People would look at my jet black hair, my slanted eyes, my small figure and associate me with China or Japan and not with America.
In 9th grade, I visited China with a friend. For once, I was in a place where I blended in easily. Walking through downtown Xian, I was surprised when a local street vendor, his face aged from years of work and his smile revealing a set of crooked teeth, approached me, shouting for me to buy his products to take home as souvenirs. I broke away, only to collide into more street vendors shouting similar remarks. Looking around, I saw the Chinese people around me, calmly walking past. No vendors approached them. How did these vendors know I wasnt from China? I looked like them, didnt I? Was it the clothes I wore or the white friend I had with me? What was it about me that made me different from everyone else here? I felt as if I were caught in between two worlds, not fully accepted in the white world I grew up in, and not fully accepted in the Chinese world that I should have grown up in.
Last year, I got back an English essay I had to write about my experiences with cultures and diversity. In his jagged handwriting, written in his trademark blue ink, my teacher wrote, Youre an amalgam of Asia and America. It was at that moment that a light bulb went off in my head. That simple sentence couldnt have made more sense. It was okay for me to be in a separate group, to have that metaphorical asterisk next to my name. I could be what I truly was meant to be, I didnt need to try to be someone else. I was a Chinese-American.
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