I'm doing 8 things
College was tough. Every social studies course I took drew a hard line between the West and the East, or as academia likes to call it the occident and the orient. Being a 2nd generation Chinese-Filipino-American (yet more labels imposed by academia), I had a hard time feeling comfortable in any social situation. I never had a lot of Asian friends in elementary school (there just weren’t many of us) and when I went to high school, I was picked on by older Asian students, so I just hung out with whomever I felt comfortable with despite their race or ethnicity. When I got to college I ran into more problems with being constantly teased about being “so Asian”. While a lot of the jokes were made in jest, they made it hard to feel comfortable in my own skin, especially at school like Boston University which had very different demographics from my highschool (predominantly Asian). Now I’m back at home and I don’t socialize much, mostly because I don’t know where to go. My father and I had an argument about it and he said my problem was that I acted “too white”, but he just didn’t understand my situation. He immigrated from the Philippines so it was pretty much determined who his barcadas would be when he got here. Since I’ve been home, I’ve fallen out with most of the friends I had since most of them were white or not non-Asian and I don’t feel comfortable socializing with them anymore. I guess that’s why I’m on the internet revealing my feelings to digital strangers.
I currently live in a very Asian neighborhood in New York, but most if not all of my neighbors are immigrants. While English is my native tongue, it’s more of an administrative language for them. That’s generally what you run into in New York: a whole bunch of recent arrivals, and I sadly can’t identify with them. Been thinking about moving out to the west coast or Hawaii. I think the Asian-American identity is more grounded out there with families of 3 or more generations having been bred on this soil.
