bloogs blowing by

please don't

please don't call me an ABC.

i'm sure in doing so you mean well, that you mean to connect with my experience as a person born in the US of Chinese ancestry.  but don't.

twice in the past week, the conversation goes like this:

them: "do you speak chinese?"
me: "no."
them:  "oh <pity>, you're an ABC."

maybe it's my own insecurity, but to be called in ABC in this context feels demeaning.  like, i'm not chinese enough for them.  in my particular case, it was a chinese american woman who called me this.  and then an italian american faculty member.  to me, it essentializes my experience as a third generation chinese american into 3 letters.  it says that i'm not authentic as i am.

and it's not that i don't think my experiences are authentic.  but for others not to recognize my experience as just being that, my authentic experience, feels empty, hollow.  doesn't my experience count for something?

i will say, that i have heard some ABCDs (sometimes american born confused desis) refer to themselves as american born cultured desis.  i'm not sure how many ways you can do that with ABC.

so just don't call me an ABC.  thanks.

the wiser

this morning walking to school, tae and i crossed paths with a group of african american students.

tae:  mommy, why are some people brown?
me:  people are different races and ethnicities.  some people are african american, some people aren't.  some people are asian american.
me:  i'm chinese american.  what are you, tae?
tae:  i'm tae!!

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tae often says, "i'm chinese, and korean, and english!"  she really has no conception of what it means to be americans; i mean, that's so hard to define when for the most part, we are all americans, living in america.  but it cracks me up because when she does say american, it comes out as "ameciran."

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this evening, there was a police officer giving a warning to the car parked next to us.  tae was curious, so we waved at the police officer and tried to be nice by saying hello.  the police officer then said, "you don't like bush?  what a shame."  (i have a 1.20.09 sticker on my car.)

chinese

tae's definition of chinese is someone who speaks chinese.  we haven't really encountered any non-asian folks who speak chinese fluently, so i'm not really sure what she would think about that.

the other day, tae was playing with a little purse that had some chinese characters on it - and she said, "bok-bok must have gave it."  bok-bok is my grandma, and she mostly speaks cantonese.  i asked tae if bok-bok was chinese, and she told me yes.  i asked tae if gi-gi was chinese, and she said no.  she didn't think pop-pop was chinese, or me, or her. 

she's asked me to read books to her that are entirely in chinese characters, and i told her that mommy can't read chinese.  we've since amended this - now she says, "mommy only reads a little chinese."  but, i guess it's not enough to make me chinese.

the people that she does think are chinese?  "there are lots chinese people at super 88!" (the local asian market)

it's such a contrast - when i was little (maybe 5), i thought that chinese people had black hair (whether they were asian or not). 

angry little asian girl

lela.jpg, originally uploaded by eliaday.

tae pointed at this, and said, "angry little girls!"

tidbits

• this evening, tae crawled under a green pillow and told me that she was a turtle, and that the pillow was her shell.
• this morning, tae sat down on her potty, inspected herself, and exclaimed, "not working!"
• this weekend, i told tae that a picnic meant eating on a blanket.  she proceded to bring play food over to the blanket we were sitting on, and moved all of the play food from the plates to... on the blanket.

i've been meaning to post about our mother's day adventures... soon.  flime ties.

how to make me angry

This past weekend, we walked down to a local coffee shop since the weather is finally getting nice.  Right when i was trying to back our stroller out of the coffee shop, this man steps in.  He was pretty much blocking us in.

"Is your daughter Chinese?"  he asks.

"No," I say.  "I'm Chinese American."

"Oh," he says.  "Do you speak Mandarin?"

"No," I say.  "I'm third generation American."

"Oh.  Well, you know, people in China said that I speak mandarin better than a Chinese person."

At this point, I started to go off on him about how I was born and raised in America, and how I don't speak Chinese and.. and... and... then he got all like, "Hey, I'm just trying to make conversation." Blah blah blah.  He was a middle-aged white male, and clearly I was getting sketchy vibes from him.  Did he not realize that i was in the process of backing the stroller OUT of the coffeeshop?

It frustrates me that he brought Tae into it.  That he made all kinds of assumptions about us.  That he couldn't talk about god damn weather if he really just wanted make conversation.  It frustrates me that I just get angry and don't have it in me to turn this into a teachable moment.  It frustrates me that in situations like this, I am powerless.  He had the power to make me uncomfortable and upset, and I had nothing.

What do you say in situations like this?

*cross posted at kimchi mamas 

wicked awesome prizes

head on over to kimchi mamas for a contest with some wicked awesome prizes.

help us celebrate the release of two recent asian american films on dvd - the motel and red doors.  all you have to do is share a funny story about your father, and you too could win copies of the movies and other cool stuff.

the rice daddies are having a similar contest, all you have to do is share stories about your mother, for an additional chance to win the same great prizes.  there's another level to this too - the blog (kimchi mamas versus rice daddies) with the most entries wins.  the losing blogteam has to post embarassing parenting stories, and daddy in a strange land has already called me out!

so, do me a favor, share a story, and enter to win wicked awesome free prizes!!

my own damn fault

so, being the open-minded mother that i am, i sat down with tae the other night to read american born chinese.  it's a comic book graphic novel and tae has taken a particular interest in the monkey king story that's woven through the book.

we got through the first two chapters, and then got to a chapter featuring "cousin chin-kee."  i felt a little sick to my stomach when i saw the images of cousin chin-kee, and read to myself some of his lines.  on one page, he shouts out in big capital letters: "HERRO AMELICA!"  and while i intellectually can understand how this is part of a bigger dialogue about race and the asian american experience, i'm pretty sure that these nuances are lost on tae.

in fact, i had to close the book immediately because i felt like tae would see the hurtful nature, even of the words (being so big and capitalized, and yes, i know she can't read.  but still).

i put down the book to distract tae and try to skip to a new chapter.  when i came back to the book, i picked up and said, "hmmm, now where were we?  oh, right here!"  and i found a new page without cousin chin-kee.  unfortunately, tae has a mind like a steel trap, and shook her head at me and found exactly where i had left off and cried out gleefully, "right here!"  and there again, was chin-kee smiling his buck-tooth-smile right back at us.

*****************************************************************
the whole cousin chin-kee thing though is still difficult for me to stomach.  i will admit that i haven't read the entire book yet, so i don't know what happens at the end of the book - though i have a feeling that in the end, the monkey king story, the cousin chin-kee story, and the other story come together in a way.  clearly, if someone other than yang (who is chinese american) drew a comic with this character, they would be in deep trouble.  but here, serving some literary purpose, reflecting some internalized racism, it is ok.

it's ok, but it's a slippery slope.  clearly, tae can't grasp how overall, this negative negative image can be used in a context to promote good.  and as such, i don't want her to see the image.  but then, what about other people?  how do you make sure that they're fully grasping the entire situation?  i'm starting to have serious doubts about how culturally aware people in this country are, you know, with the whole rosie o'donnell thing and all.

but then, would it really be productive to take the opposite approach and advocate for a nation-wide ban and fine on anyone (asian or not) who uses a chin-kee like image? 

i don't know.  in the mean time, i'll read this book by myself, and leave tae to read more age approprite books, you know like the butter battle book. =)

torn

so, to prepare myself, i'm starting to tour and visit different child care centers.  everyone's schedules are in flux right now, so i'm not really sure what's going to happen next semester.

this morning, tae and i visited a woman who does in home child care (licesnsed, etc.) pretty close to where we live.  in her ad, she wrote that she was bilingual in english and mandarin.  i would love it if tae started learning a second language; unfortunately, i don't really have the skills to teach her any language besides english.

when we got to the woman's house, tae was very excited.  there was a new-to-her kitchen set, and lots to look at.  the thing that really surprised me was how quiet it was.  the kids were all sitting in chairs, and the woman was doing flashcards of chinese words with them.  they looked like they were having fun, but it was so quiet.  tae is not so quiet.  she was talking more than any of the kids (who ranged from 19 months to 5 years).

the woman told me that she had two kids who were adopted from china, so their parents were "american."  she also told me that the 5 year old had only been there for a month and she had already pretty much surpassed all of my knowledge of chinese.  (she was answering questions that i couldn't even understand.)

while i would love for tae to learn chinese, my gut told me that this particular place wouldn't be a good match for tae.  or, rather, this wasn't the place that was a good match for me.  i think the quiet was really a shocker for me because a) i'm always talking to tae, and b) i just read this article in the NYT which suggested that talking to kids early on is one thing that makes a big difference, educationally.

but then, when we got home, tae was singing a new song.  i asked her what it was, and she told me with gusto that it was "CHINESE!"

asian american studies, lesson 3

my daughter knows who ronald takaki is, but doesn't know who dora the explorer is.

there are lots of pictures of ronald takaki in my office. (he came to speak here last year.)  she points to his pictures and says, "kaki!"

when she sees dora the explorer, she says, "baby!"

i guess it's time to move strangers from a different shore to tae's reading list.  (the photo is tae reading margaret atwood.  tae really took a liking to the book after she saw aunt jen reading it.)