Do you ever feel stuck between cultures, not knowing which one to identify with? Do you sometimes feel that your roots are messy, and have a hard time figuring out who you are? This blog post is about how we can use our emotions as signposts that point us toward the network of people and places where we truly belong.
“For the first time, I could breathe easy. My canvas was ready to be splashed with the boldest colors.”
Laura Gao, Messy Roots
Hold on to this quote. We’ll come back to it.
Laura never asked to land in a place where she has to navigate between the culture of her Chinese parents and the culture of her American peers. At age four, she arrives in Texas with a name her pre-K teacher can’t pronounce and her classmates tease her about. Her mother’s advice, “Tell them what your name means,” does little to help. A name that sums up two Chinese parents’ love for their daughter doesn’t conjure affection and beauty in an English-speaking country. So Laura and her mom decide on the name of the first lady: Laura Bush.
The new name comes with a promise of being unsurpassably American. It does not, however, protect Laura from what comes next.
At home, Laura eats eggrolls, crispy guōbā rice, and dumplings. When a classmate sees her home-brought lunch, she says it smells like something died in there.
That comment is a microaggression, a small remark or action that puts someone down for being different. Micro means small and aggression means an attack, and that is what a microaggression is: a very small attack. It’s often said so quickly and casually that the person saying it doesn’t even notice it slipped out. It can sound like a joke, or even like a compliment (“Wow, your English is so good!”), but the message underneath is “You don’t belong here.”
Small does not mean harmless. For Laura, the remark is not just embarrassing and confusing. It is a punch in the stomach, and there is no one to teach her how to respond to it.
Sadly, there is more. At home she is encouraged to be a mathlete, while she wants to be a basketball player. For her American classmates, winning a prize at the math Olympiad would make them feel proud. For Laura it is a cause of painful embarrassment, because when her name is called, kids whisper behind her back, “Of course she won. She’s Asian.”
Visiting relatives in China doesn’t make things easier. There are customs she doesn’t understand, and she can’t find the right words in Mandarin to explain herself. Next to her cousins, she falls short of being “the perfect Chinese kid.” Next to her classmates, her gravity-defying hair loses against beach waves.
It is the constant need to explain herself that Laura finds so hard to take, especially having to explain things about herself that she doesn’t yet fully understand.
The important thing about Laura is that she stays in touch with her feelings. As overwhelming and unsettling as they can be at times, they also show her which direction to turn and which people to seek out.
Her feelings tell her:
She doesn’t know these things ahead of time, and that is OK. All teens need time to figure things out. The feelings come first. When we have the patience to sit with them and observe them, understanding follows.
Here is how it works for Laura.
The art studio. In high school, Laura befriends Sree, another daughter of immigrant parents, who fascinates her with her directness and her boldness in calling their classmates out on their rudeness. With Sree in the school’s art studio, Laura can take deep breaths and do what feels right. Her paintbrush says what neither English nor Mandarin can. The feeling of ease signals to Laura that in this place, with this person, she can be herself. And when a painting goes wrong, Sree reassures Laura she can always start over with a new canvas.
Learning Mandarin twice. In Sunday Chinese school, learning Mandarin feels perplexing. Why learn one of the hardest languages in the world? In college, learning it alongside Bill, who is confident both in the language and in himself, feels like something entirely different. Laura catches up quickly and takes three years of college-level Mandarin. It’s the same language her parents wanted her to learn in Sunday school, but the two situations make her feel completely different. Learning it with Bill, who stays up late to help her with what she didn’t learn as a child, feels comforting and reassuring. With Bill, she doesn’t have to pretend she knows more than she does.
The Culture Show. Texas felt suffocating, so Laura goes to college at the University of Pennsylvania, where she finds a community of peers in the Chinese Students Association. Bill takes her to the CSA Culture Show, where an improv troupe performs sketches about the Chinese American experience. The secret of the show’s appeal is that the actors figure things out as they go. Watching the show, Laura senses that she too can figure things out as she goes, finding her own connections between the people and places in her life.
The basketball court in Wuhan. Back in China on her own, Laura steps onto a court as the only girl there. The feel of the basketball on her fingers tells her she is exactly where she should be. She earns the respect of the Chinese boys by raining threes. Excitement is a signpost too, and this one points to one of her values: the courage to go where no one expects to find her.
Now that quote makes sense.
“For the first time, I could breathe easy. My canvas was ready to be splashed with the boldest colors.”
Following her feelings, Laura realizes that the stereotypes she has faced fall short of who she is. Her sense of self is like a kaleidoscope, forming ever new patterns and nuances, and she belongs to the places where she is free to keep exploring who she is: the art studio with Sree, the CSA at Penn, the Mandarin classroom, the court in Wuhan, the square dance hall in the Chinese countryside where she dances to her own beat.
Not one of those places was marked on a map someone handed her. Laura drew the map herself, by following her feelings.
This is the point. Your feelings, including the uncomfortable and confusing ones, are not in the way of figuring out who you are. They are how you figure it out. If you feel stuck between cultures, or your own feelings are hard to read right now, a therapist like me who focuses on emotions can:
My job is not to hand you a finished picture of who you are. It is to help you get your canvas ready.
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