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Hi Chris: I just viewed your "What is an Asian?" docu. A friend of mine from San Francisco sent me the link. Your central question is a poignant one, made more pertinent by the fact that you are hapa, which complicates your identity relative to your current friends. The intersection of your racial identity, coupled with your sexuality and regional identity comprise a unique amalgamation of person that is, at best, hard to label. But the way you define yourself resonates with me. While I think your film does well with exploring these questions, I'd be interested in seeing this discussed in more depth, in particular through the lens of other asian americans elsewhere in the country, and maybe specifically hapas. I am half-Thai. My mother moved to Louisiana for college but finished her schooling in Nashville, where she me my father and I was born a few years later (I often tell folks I am half Thai, half Tennessee--always a few chuckles from that). Growing up in Nashville and Memphis and subsequently Delaware comprised an unusual racial identity for me. Memphis, where I spent a good portion of my childhood (and as you can imagine), is not known for its extensive multicultural makeup during the early 1980s. I don't recall any other Asians, of any decent, in my classrooms from daycare through fourth grade. I think there might have been one. And maybe my parents knew a bi-racial couple from work. Memphis, and to an extent Nashville was a biracial town, black and white, with not a large variation in between. Delaware opened things up quite a bit. And it was here that I started to connect with my Thai heritage. Even with multiple trips to see my mother's family in Thailand, any reconnection in East Coast cities is pretty much limited to more of a pan-Asian identity rather than a specifically Thai one. Chinatowns abound, K-town and Vietnamese restaraunts and pho shops are just about the extent of any rekindling of ethnic heritage. I didn't meet anyone else of thai descent in Delaware until my junior year of high school. My class had a total of three Asians, two full blood (and FOBy) Chinese students (their parents owned a local takeout) and a half Japanese boy and me (thus the total of three). Surprisingly, it wasn't until I went back to Nashville for college that I really started to make strides in understanding my own ethnic identity. Joining the Asian American student union (we're still an umbrella group, not the country specific groups I'm sure exist in all UC schools), helped to make those connections. In fact, I'm sure I learned more in social experience from those Asians Americans than I had through my own explorations in Philadelphia or even New York (it's so hard when there's a huge language barrier). Coupled with a rigorous schooling in sociological method and critical thinking, I started to understand this idea of multiple intersecting identities that factor in all these different influences rather than compartmentalizing into separate labels and all the stereotypical baggage those labels bring. My Southern identity makes my overall identity all the more complicated. I still find it so odd when I meet an American from the South, complete with local vernacular and colloquialisms that immediately identify her regional affiliation. My boyfriend (who is white and from Delaware) simply hates it when I break out in accent (although at times he finds it cute). Ok, this is part one. I have a little more to say, but I have to get ready for a wedding. I'm in Texas for the week. Sorry to bore you if you've already heard this. Let me know if I'm a crazy cook. Post a comment in response: |
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