Mom, Am I Chinese?
I Still Don’t Really Know
On the first day of kindergarten, a little girl asked me if I was Chinese. It took me a second to answer that I didn’t know. At recess, three little boys bowed in front of me. It made me laugh. Maybe I was Chinese. I wanted a label that explained why I always felt so different. Why people openly stared. And every time I went to the mall, kids would point at my family. I was born in Kansas City, Missouri.
“Mom, mom, am I Chinese?” I asked loudly as soon as I got home. My petite mother laughed and explained that we were Japanese. “Japanese,” I repeated to myself. I wanted to remember the label so that I could tell my new friends at school.
The next time I was asked if I was Chinese, I proudly told a cute boy that I was Japanese. He looked puzzled and asked, “What’s that?” I drew a complete blank.
“Japan is a country,” my mom tried to explain to me. “Chinese people are from China which is a different country,” my mom continued. But somehow we weren’t from Japan. My parents were from Hawaii. I understood Hawaii. My father worked for the airlines and we had visited Hawaii often. I didn’t get pointed at in Hawaii.
