Personal Narrative: My Experience With The Loss Of Personal Identity

I left everything behind and refused to go back. I left the one thing I wanted the most, but found the one thing I needed, freedom. My dark cloud of regret was behind me as I entered my salvation, Amsterdam. I entered the gates of Amsterdam and saw a multitude of smiling faces and entered the light. I had no recollection of how I got there, but I knew he wasn’t here I could feel it. I was finally free and I walked through the golden gates knowing I could start over.

To be young and Asian in America is a special brand of torture. There is an unspoken dictum of silence that grips Asian youth, a denial of our place in popular culture. Asian youth walk in America not quite sure where we fit in-black children have a particular brotherhood, Hispanic children have a particular brotherhood, white children own everything else. We cannot lay claim to jazz or salsa or swing; we cannot say our ancestors fought for equality against an oppressive government or roamed the great hallways of power across the globe. We do not have a music, a common hero, a lexicon of slang. Asian youth experience personal diasporas every day.

Growing up as an Asian American, I often struggle to identify my own cultural identity. Being the first generation of both my mother and father’s side of the family, I more than often get confused between American and Asian culture when applying them to society or at home. While being raised at home, I am largely influenced by culture and traditions from Asian parents and relatives. However, when I go to school or someplace else, I am heavily judged for practicing part of my Asian culture because it is entirely different than western or American. With that being noted, I began to learn and adapt to the western culture in hopes of fitting with society as well of trying to keep my Asian culture intact. As can be seen, this situation I dealt with is the same problem the whole Asian American community faces. Mainly focusing on younger generations like me for example, the Asian American community struggles to adapt to the western culture because they were raised with an Asian influence. Wishing to fit in society and be part of the social norms, the Asian Americans community faces issues that identify their cultural identity.

My name is Richard Hu: I am 30 years old and I am Asian American. This means that I am both Asian, and American. According to Park (2005), the latest census proclaimed that Asian Americans cover more than 4.1% of the population. In its totality that is 11.3 million people. Much like Park (2005) states, “we are not a new phenomenon: Asians have been apart of the U.S landscape from as early as the 17th century … the irony is that we remain “strangers from a distant shore””(p. My parents were born in Korea but relocated in order to give our family more opportunity to excel. I, like many others in my heritage consider myself to be a 1st generation immigrant. However, growing up in the suburbs of Hillsborough California I began to lose my sense of self. It wasn’t until I was much older that I began to identify with my Asian Culture. I whole heartedly feel that Park (2005) said it best when she argued that “Our perceived “foreign-ness” accentuates our “two–worldness”... not Asian enough to repatriate, not “American” enough to integrate” (p. 4). Although it still isn’t an easy concept for people to grasp, over the years I have learned to be more understanding of my Asian American upbringing (Question 1).

“Mom, why is she so dark like fillipino if she’s korean like me?”, “I thought asians were suppose to be smart”, “Since your last name is Kim are you related to Kim Jong Un?”. These were some of the comments I’ve heard growing up in, my whole life. Not just from America where people see me not as a true American but also from Korea, where there is no ethnicity difference. Growing up, I learned to understand it was because I looked different and racism is a concept that is inevitable, but the summer of seventh grade I visited Korea, it changed everything. It had been a while since I last visited Korea, I had been so young I could not remember anything. But when I went that summer when I was older, I was shocked. In a land where I thought I belonged to with my race, was doing the opposite of what I had to learn to overcome in America. In a place where I thought I looked the same still had reasons to accept me. Even though I was the same race as the people there, I still wasn’t good enough. My skin was to dark, I was too big, my face was too round, and I didn’t look ‘asian’. Racism had been consistently plaguing by my side since the beginning.

I was born in Taiwan, when I was eleven years old, my family have immigrated to a small town in Eastern Kentucky. Moving from a mostly homogeneous society to a heterogeneous society was quite a change for our family, it has also open my eyes to culture conflicts. Growing up, I’ve define my race as Asian, and my ethnicity as Taiwanese-American, at home my parents speak mainly Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese, and we ate mostly Taiwanese food at home, however I have been socialized and adapted into the American culture in school, and with my peers. Consequently, as I grow older, I’ve identify myself with both culture and heritages. I have made an effort to not forget my native languages and my native culture values, instead, I’ve try my best to make the best out of both cultures.

Like many American-born-Chinese children, I did not seem to realize and accept that being Chinese and American was possible and it was something to be proud, not ashamed, of. In Rodriguez’s terms, “ I became more tactful, careful to keep separate the two very different worlds of my day” (598). When I was at school, I portrayed myself as another person than who I was at home. In school, I pushed myself to keep a facade just to make my peers believe I was no different from them; I wanted to be white and share the same ideals as they did. Being surrounded by a drastically different group of people from your own in school leads one to feel ostracized. The ethics and lessons from school is thoroughly enlightening, but you have to give and take. Rodriguez left his heritage behind which widened the gap between his family, yet in return he received a higher

Lee begins her essay with Korean-identified students group. Korean-Identified students group “rejected a pan-ethnic identity as Asian, and worked hard to distinguish themselves from other Asian Americans at the school”. (Lee, 124) Korean immigrants show stronger ethnic solidarity than other ethnic groups, they fear to association with other Asian groups, they refuse to mix with other Asian American ethnic group because they think other Asian groups might threaten their social position. In Lee’s research, Korean-identified students often believe that if achieve “model minority”, they would overcome racism and gain acceptances by American society, meanwhile, this is a best way to help them achieve “American dream”. Korean-identified students think whites sit at the top in today America society on their subconscious.

At first the topic was innocent and held no real attachments, but something clicked. The more I researched the more I felt connected to the paper. The research paper had unknowingly emptied me out of what I use to shamefully hide. I am an Asian-American teenage girl living in a predominantly Latinx city. All my life, I was surrounded by their culture and people. My only real exposure to Asian culture was at home, but that was still minimal. When I entered high school, I became very aware of my presence in Lawrence. I was different from almost everyone in the city. I lacked the curly hair and the caramel skin, and when I spoke my native language it did not sound like theirs. I felt singled out and became embarrassed to be Vietnamese. I wanted to fit in as much as

Some years ago at one of our frequent family dinners, my paternal grandmother grumbled something in Korean to my mother. Now, after twenty-plus years of exposure to Korean and other foreign languages buzzed about, I've grown quite adept at tuning out most of it, but this time my ears perked up; I heard my name mentioned. I asked my mother, "What did she say?" She muttered, "Nothing, never mind. Eat more spinach." Undeterred by her concern for my dietary habits, I insisted on knowing what my grandmother had said about me, because I could tell by her tone that it was not very flattering. After some persistence, my mother told me my grandmother said that I have no "cultural identity." I could see my grandmother eyeing me from across

The identity crisis occurs when individuals are facing the dilemma of either of the culture to make some fundamental decisions. From certain angle it is more severe on second generation Asian Americans than the first generation Asian Americans. According to Justin Chan, a second-generation Chinese American, she states that to build a bicultural identity is actually a balancing act for her. In order to feel more comfortable in both cultural groups, second-generation Asian Americans choose to identify differently when facing different people. They need to punctuate their “American side” when dealing with non-Asian peers and also punctuate their “Asian side” at home when facing their families. This kind of balancing act is widely applied to second-generation Asian Americans.

In his article “Distilling My Korean American Identity,” he explores the process of self-discovery of identity from his teenage years to his college life, and with the help from his significant other. Being Asians in the United States, Gonzalo and Patrick S. both have had to confront the major issue of identity conflicts in different ways. These were due to the assimilation stress, generational gap and racial discrimination that happened within their family and school lives.

Although I had then spent two years at Jefferson Elementary and replaced my Korean accent with an American one, I still felt like “The New Korean Girl;” I was no longer the only Korean—there were “New Koreans” in my grade—but I was the only one “nicknamed” Kimchee. I hoped that if I lessened one difference between my peers and myself, they would stop calling me Kimchee. This was the complete reason for wanting a DS, but I never told my mom because I didn’t want to hurt her with the emotional pain and embarrassment that often prompted me to tears.

So, if I make the fried Kim-chi with the Kim-chi from a market, it is just not tasty as much as the one that my mom made. Yet, however the taste of it, every time I eat Kim-chi, it reminds me of my mom’s caring for me and the fact that I am Korean. Because when she tried to make me eat Kim-chi, she always used to say like ‘oh, Koreans should eat Kim-chi.’ By that time, however, what she said did not really come across my mind. Since all the people around me were Korean, I did not really know what being Korea means. But now I am in America, and being ‘Korean’ becomes one of the unique characteristics that represent me.

A quarter of your life has passed, and you have been told by a stranger that you have been pronouncing your last name wrong. One day, Caroline Hwang, a first generation Korean American, faces this dilemma, and is thrown into an identity crisis. Hwang’s memoir, “The Good Daughter”, explores her feelings of being torn between American and Korean cultures, and presents hardships that many first generation people face. Facing her internal conflicts of dropping out of graduate school coupled with her feelings of not having a cultural identity, makes Hwang question if her life would have been easier had her parents had stayed in Korea. She highlights the struggles of Asian Americans dealing with conflicting social and cultural demands, a hardship I also face being an Indian-American. First generation children often do not feel stable due to the various perceptions of themselves by others and the expectations they are held to, but staying in a home country may not necessarily make one’s life happier.