Asian Americans

• 17 million Asian Americans according to Pew
• 15% of Canadians have origins to Asia compared to in U.S. just 5.8%
• 14 Million Asian Consumers in the U.S.
• Asians in North America - success & friction

My Face Does Not Match My Race

What life's like when your looks don't tell your story.

I am the fifth-generation descendant of a pioneer Chinese-American family, but I have red hair and freckles.  My Caucasian face has marked me as an outsider in the hinese community (even in my own family), while my Chinese heart has forever made me feel like an outsider in the large white culture in which I live.  I have lived my entire life in physical conflict - my face does not match the nthnicity I claim as my own.

I had a typical Chinese-American childhood, meaning that my family insisted I learn as much as possible about my ancestors.  My aunt told stories of my great-great-grandfather, who came to this country to help build the transcontinental railroad.  My grandfather recounted tales about my great grandfather, who, although illiterate, became a successful merchant, was one of the founders of Los Angeles Chinatown, and married my great-grandmother when it was against the law for Chinese and Caucasians to marry.  When I was very young, my grandmother used to take me around at wedding banquets to introduce me to relatives, carefully explaining that each of them had a different title depending on birth order and whether they came from the maternal or paternal side.  All of those people had black hair and lovely golden skin, but I can remember how confused I was when I'd see my reflection in mirrors or store windows.  Still, I've always known exactly where I fit in the family tree.  No matter what my skin an dhair colour, I will always be Fong See's freat-granddaughter, Sumoy's niece, Gim's third cousin once removed.

Since my face and my ethnicity are in conflict, how do I express my cultural background?  The same way everyone does - by what is in my home, by how I dress, by what I eat and, of course, by how I see the world and how the world sees me.  My home is decorated with Chinese scrolls and a large number of Chinese antiques.  Although I try to avoid clothes with frogs or mandarin collars (too obvious), I do love Chinese silk, Chinese prints, Chinese peasnat jewelery.  While I don't have a lot of time to cook Chinese food, I've grown to love Ken Hom's Easy Family Recipes from a Chinese-American Childhood, which is filled with the kinds of home-style dishes that my grandfather and my father used to make.  And lathough I know that all mothers nibble at their children'sleftovers on occasion, I feel compelled to eat every last piece of gristle and such every last bit of marrow out of my kid's disgarded chicken bones, because that is what a woman from the Chinese peasant class is raised to do.

In America, I don't quite fit in, no matter where I go.  In Chinatown, waiters offer offer forks or reguse to bring me a particular dish because its 'too strange for American tastes".  I ;ve had my own blood relatives  discuss my appearance in front of me as though I wasn't there, commenting on my build ("not fat like most Americans") and concern for family and history ("She expresses filial piety unlike most Americans").

I've been in conversations where someone who looks Chinese has said "You're more Chinese than I am".  Its usually meant as an insult: Why would anyone want to be so backward?  Although they're ashamed of their heritage, I cherish mine.  (But to be fair I've never had to spend a day lookin Chinese in a culture that values being white.)  On the other had, some Chinese Americans - usually younger, college educated and stringently politically correct - see me as too "assimilated'.  To them, that's the ultimate dirty word, the ultimate sellout.  There's no way I could ever understand what it means to be Chinese.

However, I do look 'right' in the larger white culture.  So it's true that I've never been the overt victim of either or positive or negative sterotypes.  No one's accused me of being good at math or science.  No one's ever made a pass at me because I fit some sexual sterotype of the China doll.  But at my baby shoer, which was held in a Chinese restaurant, a couple of my firneds mistake my father for a waiter, calling him 'surly' and 'slow'.  When my husband and I bought our first house, the housing laws still stated that we couldn't sell the house to anyone of "Ethiopian" or "Mongolian" descent.  That statewide law barring ownership of property had kept my family - even those who had only one-quarter Chinese blood and looked about as Chinese as I do - confiend to Chinatown for nearly a century, meaning that assismilation was not an option to be argued over at cocktail parties or at academia symposia.

I may not look Chinese, but I've felt these slights deeply, maybe even more than justified , because my 'face' weemed to suggest to others a shared attitude of ignorance and racism.  When I speak about my books and my research of Chinese-American culture, I talk about the history of the miscegenation laws, and how today people can marry whomever they like.  The proof of this change is in the world faces of children I see in Minneapolix, Missoula and Miami.  I can always tell an audiene that I may be an aberration today with my red hair and Chinese heart, but that in another 20 years they'll be able to meet someone and really not know what she is by her face.

In a sense this mixing of cultures is already happening.  Today people such as Dean ain (Aisain and Caucasian), Keanu Reeves (Caucasian, Asian and Hawaiian), Mariey Carey (Black, Venezuelan and Caucasian) and Tiger Woods (Black, Caucasian, Native American and Asian) can become celebrities without being condemned or ostracized for their mixed blood.  This doesn't mean that they aren't occasionally called onto the politically correct carpet by people who feel that they identify too much with one side, or , conversely, for not wanting to be the poster child for this or that race, but it doesn mean that on television, Dean Cain can get the white girl and no angry viewers will launch a letter-writing campaign condemning it or enact a law forbidding it.

We've come a long way from my grandparents' day when they had to leave the country to get married, but I still feel like an outsider, unable to match my face to my heart.  Yet even I have moments of acceptance. I like to think of one o f my first trips to China when a group of villagers finally  got past the shock of my face and hair and instead began to look for our physical similarities.  The women pinched my arms and then their own to demonstrate that we had the same proportions.  They put my hands on their face, then patted mine, remarking on its Southchina shape.  I was uttering and blissfully  embraced for who I am.  I was no longer just my face.  I was also my heart. - byLisa See * Origi

nal  appeared in SELF Magazine   11.1999