I am close to finishing my sophomore year of college, and even now I still struggle with my identity and fitting in at a university with mainly Caucasians, and how I fit in with everyone else’s expectations of me as an Asian-American. I would like to note that I am writing down my experiences growing up, but my experiences do not sum up every other Asian’s experience when it comes to how they grew up and what they expect from themselves. My purpose in writing this is to summarize my struggles and how I have coped with them in hopes of being able to help someone if they are coping with similar struggles.
I have been called “white-washed” since middle school. It was a term that was very confusing to me, because I did not understand why it was so bad that I was acting more “white”. In my head I thought “That is a good thing! That means I am better at other Asians than fitting in”. It also seemed that the more “white” I was acting, the more people wanted to be my friend. It then became a goal of mine to be more like my popular classmates, and try hard to act like my Taiwanese background did not exist. I grew up ashamed of my culture because I was always made fun of my Asian features, so I became proud whenever someone told me “Yeah, you are Asian, but you are not actually Asian”.
That was Middle School for me, just wanting to be white and wanting to be liked and thinking that those two were heavily correlated. Now that I have grown up a lot, and Kpop and anime has become very popular. New problems have formed. Instead of people wanting me to be more “white” it seems as if people have more specific expectations of me as an Asian. I am constantly asked “Do you watch anime?” or “Who is your favorite BTS member?” without any context of me as a person or whether I even watch anime or listen to Kpop. I felt very lost in finding who I am with my friends in school, and learning how to accept my actual culture that is not just summarized by what is popular in society.
I learned how to accept my culture by reaching out to people within my community, and finding more people raised in a similar culture who are dealing with the same problems. It helps to find out that you are not alone. In a school that is predominantly white, I do feel like I stand out and that people only notice me because of what Asian stereotypes I offer. I still struggle to not go back to how I was in middle school, and try hard to fit in. For anyone struggling with similar problems, hiding yourself is never worth it. Every culture is amazing and has so much to offer society, I embrace my Asian culture more and more everyday and am always more happy to learn more information. In conclusion, my Taiwanese culture has so much to offer, and once I stopped pretending I was someone else, and embraced my heritage, I became less lost and more confident in myself. Now I do things that make me feel more like myself, instead of striving to please others.