Despite its large population of Asian students, I’d never felt more out of place than when I first arrived at UCLA. For the first time in my life I was hyper-aware of my Asian body and the space it took up. Was it my freshman classic triple, crammed with me and my two white sorority-girl roommates, that contributed to my cultural dissonance? Or maybe being given the reductionist title of “girl from Hawaii” was not as harmless as I led on. Or maybe the fact that I couldn’t see my identity or life experiences reflected in any of my Asian classmates (even though a TA confused us for each other) made me question whether I was in the right place.
My childhood in Hawaii existed in a bubble. I was raised by a Korean mom, my brother had a Chinese dad, my high-school girlfriend was white-passing but was a mix of five different ethnicities and two of my best friends were part Native Hawaiian — and none of it meant a damn thing. The depolarization of racial boundaries at UCLA pales in comparison to the melting pot of cultures, languages and families back home. And I took it for granted.
I struggled to find my footing for essentially all of my first year. It seemed that everybody knew the appropriate social patterns and fell in line accordingly; meanwhile, I isolated myself from my white peers out of shame for being Asian and from my Asian peers out of shame for not being Asian enough. UCLA was my first taste of white America, and despite 17 years of scorning the United States for its history of colonialism and unsustainable tourism in Hawaii, I desperately wanted to be assimilated into it. Coming to Los Angeles also made me realize how out of touch I was with my Korean heritage; I had always regretted not learning Korean as a child, but now that ignorance felt traitorous.
Eventually, I stopped putting so much pressure on myself to fit neatly into the category of “Asian American.” What was I trying to prove? Whose validation did I seek to finally make me feel Asian American? I built up expectations of myself to be a good model minority college student, someone who translates for their immigrant parents and can hold their own in a game of Rage Cage, but learned along the way that I was using arbitrary experiences to define a complex reality.
To this day, “Asian American” is still something I grapple with as a term to describe myself. I look at my life and all I see is Hawaii — a place shaped by Asian and American influences, yes, but distinct in its values of community, Indigenous empowerment and interracial culture. Eventually, I found my place at UCLA with people who respect my background but also do not reduce me to it. Some are Asian, some are not, some are also from Hawaii and some are not; what really matters is that we were all gunning for Kaity to win this past season of The Bachelor.
During my time at UCLA, I’ve made my peace with not feeling Asian nor American enough. My white friends who watch Korean dramas know more Korean than I do, and I will always forget which cities surround Los Angeles despite trying to get California residency. Sometimes my language slips into Hawaiian Pidgin, which both my white American and Asian American friends cannot understand. Occasionally I feel very in touch with my heritage, other days I feel like LA is my second home, sometimes I feel both at once but most of the time I feel neither. Identity is fickle, it is contradictory and it is whatever we want it to be. I do not have it all figured out, and doubt I will anytime soon, and that is the beauty of it.