Emma Jing

I am a second-generation Chinese and Manchurian-American girl who is half-way ignorant of her culture. I can speak and understand fluent Mandarin, but fall short of any true mastery of the language. I'm a ravaged student only acquiesced by xiaolongbao and peking duck. I've had trouble accepting my identity as an East Asian girl, always looking for validation in places that I shouldn't have. My journey to self-acceptance can best be described as: halfway there.

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I could never bring my homemade lunch to school. It smelled bad and I hated to see the faint looks of disgust that graced my classmates' faces when I opened the lid. I felt this way about almost every aspect of my Asian American identity. It's that age-old crisis of which side of yourself to embrace. As I've grown older, I've come to appreciate and find pride in the parts of myself that matter. But this is no linear progression. There's days where I feel worse about my last name than others. I can only definitively describe my "reclamation of the Asian identity" as a work in progress. Never fully finished.

Half Way There, Emma Jing

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My zhajiangmian 炸酱面 is smelly
It’s my favorite food, something simple that reminds me of home
The scent wafts around our unfavorably lit elementary cafeteria
Her pointed nose twitches in a flare of disgust
She smiles at me in that quintessential Western way
The kind that makes my prepubescent heart constrict in my chest
As if she pities me, as if my smelly food next to her uncrusted PB&J
And organic hummus makes her better somehow.
My head chants until I’m dizzy: Defend. Deflect. Detract.
Always easier said than done,
Her measured words tear at any semblance of confidence
My nose doesn’t slope outwards like hers,
The skin around her eyes don’t threaten to swallow her whole
Until nothing but jet black orbs stare out at the world.

My qipao 旗袍 is itchy
The flesh of my ancestors traced in intricate patterns
Trail up my arms and press on my ever-beating heart
Suffocating me as if they sense my unease
With my own culture, or a culture that is only half-mine
I’m a fraud.
My thighs too pudgy, my arms not slender
This isn’t right.
I’m suddenly seized by a culture in which
I don’t understand
I am supposed to see myself
A woman: porcelain skin, cherry lips, and a quiet elegance
Somehow she is me, and I am her.

My hongbao 紅包 is lucky
The ruby four edged envelope,
Maybe it contains a treasure, a secret
To acceptance?
My relatives are loud, not in an obnoxious way
But like an endearing cloud of warmth and family
They consume our suburban, carpeted home
Upstairs, their voices dim into a steady hum of stories
Of morals, of food, of laughter.
I’d quit Chinese school long ago,
But my native tongue mingles with their foreign
Us second-generations call it Chinglish,
A delightful concoction of half-identities
The off-tune karaoke bellows out into the wee hours of the night
Halfway there, I think. Halfway there.