How It Feels to be Asian Me, 2023

A riff on Zora Neale Hurston’s “How It feels to be Colored Me” 95 years later

How does it feel to be Asian in 2023, nearly 60 years after the passing of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, let alone the Civil Rights Act of 1964? As I read Zora Neale Hurston’s “How it Feels be Colored Me,” published more than 60 years after the abolition of slavery in America, I am blown away by her brilliance as I usually am any time I read her writings. So, naturally, I begin to reflect on my own life as an Asian-American — and how I freed myself.

But let’s take a look at Hurston’s essay first. There is a distinctively unmistakable sense of freedom — freedom to be herself and explore. Did she feel the sting of discrimination in Jim Crow America? Most certainly: at certain times, she felt herself to be undeniably Black — just as at others, she perceived others as being undeniably white. But did race define everything? No. As she puts it, she did not “belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all but about it. . . . No, I do not weep at the world.”

Moreover, she had “no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored,” but perceived herself as “merely a fragment of the Great Soul that surges within the boundaries.”

Much like the young Hurston, I was not immediately aware of my color for some time — or at least, of being drastically different and “other.” I grew up in a very multicultural Bronx during the 1960s — some years before “White Flight” took off. My apartment building in the Kingsbridge area of the Bronx was the archetypal melting pot, full of Jews, Irish, Puerto Rican, Filipino, and Chinese folks. All were friendly with my parents, even though their English was limited.

But this changed when we moved to the outskirts of Princeton, New Jersey, and later, to the leafy neighborhoods of Evanston in the mid-1970s when I was 12. By then, my parents had already discovered the hard truth that Asians are regarded by many whites as being little better than Blacks. Evidently, the real estate agent, though friendly and cordial, had only picked the most run-down areas for my parents to look at — never mind my father was a recently tenured professor. And when we finally moved in, the “Welcome Wagon” lady barely cracked a smile even as she presented us with a chocolate cake.

I remember saying, “Mom, that woman didn’t look very friendly.”

Mom merely answered, “Oh, she was nice enough. How kind of them to bake a cake for us!”

I wasn’t so sure. My suspicions were confirmed when a Black family moved in a year later: they too were treated like outsiders.

I soon felt trapped by my race. Even though I considered myself American — after all, I was born here — no one else seemed to. It wasn’t just the “Ching chong” epithets, but also more seemingly “benign” remarks: for instance, friends reminding me, “don’t forget to check the Asian box” whenever I filled out their surveys. As if I could forget!

My parents, as I’ve mentioned here, were also keen to drive the lesson home. “Remember,” Dad told me again and again, “other Americans will never accept you as an American. You are Chinese as far as they are concerned.” When I complained that my friends were able to pursue any career they wanted — and at that time, most were aspiring actresses — he responded bluntly. “They are white. You are not. They have blond hair and blue eyes. Do you see any actresses like you on TV?”

Meanwhile, my mother discouraged me from buying the clothes I liked, telling me only white girls could wear kilts. (In retrospect, I looked silly — as I discovered in college!) She instructed me to avoid bright lip colors like red and hot pink, explaining that they only looked good on women with very fair skin — meaning white. (But wait, I thought, Black women look superb with those colors!) Not least, don’t wear anything too conspicuous, she warned: you’re different enough so you will be noticed.

In short, I felt boxed in by both the outside world — and my parents. I was Asian and supposed to do “Asian things.” I was to be a quiet and well-behaved. And I was certainly not supposed to call attention to myself in any way, unless it was — of course, to be an outstanding math and science student. The fact that I was an only child meant there was no room for error and no escaping my parents’ ever watchful eyes: until college, that is.

At the same time, however, my friends’ parents — nearly all of whom were European immigrants with Ph.D.’s— admired my interest in Mozart and literature in general. To them, I was “European” — and they were not shy about bashing all things American. So they praised me for my patent un-Americanness. I was well brought up, they said. Not like those other Americans!

One even went out of her way to urge me to attend Smith rather than our local state university at Champaign. “Frances,” she told me, “Listen to me. You will not fit in at Champaign. That school is full of very typically American students, the kinds who only care about football and sports. You are so European. You belong at a place like Smith.”

You see, nearly all literature I admired as a teen was British or French, and all classical music I enjoyed was German (e.g., Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann.) Even my favorite pop musicians were mostly European (e.g., Abba, Elton John, Electric Light Orchestra, Fleetwood Mac) — that is, except for Black musicians like Chic, Donna Summer, Michael Jackson, and the Supremes. From this perspective, I suppose my going to Oxford — which I never would have anticipated at this point — was not altogether unforeseen.

So there I was: a supposed European without a drop of European blood — yet, neither Chinese nor American. To become “European” seemed to be an escape route from the worlds I felt excluded from — and to which I didn’t want to belong either. As such, throughout high school and college, I had little interest in American, much less Chinese history and literature. (Perhaps I would have been interested in the latter had it been taught?) After all, I felt excluded by one while hating being identified with the other. One stood for racism and the other, I believed, felt like a damper on everything I enjoyed and wanted to pursue.

Ironically, it was only by delving deep into the history of rights and reform in 18th-century England much later during graduate study that I began to take interest in American and ultimately Chinese history. As I studied “the war of American independence” from the British perspective, I grew interested in the American perspective as well. (Damn, why didn’t I pay closer attention in American history AP class?) And as I studied the rise of Irish nationalism in the nineteenth century, I grew much more interested in the Opium War. As I pass the second half of my life, hope I have enough time to explore these subjects much further in the remaining decades left to me.

Now, how does it feel to be the Asian me, nearly 60 years after the passing of the Civil Rights Act and the Immigration Act? I am glad that the most overt forms of racism I faced as a teen and young adult are quickly disappearing. That “Oriental” has been replaced by “Asian.” That people are generally less inclined to tap me on the shoulder to ask, “Are you Chinese or Japanese?” I am also happy that Asians are finally making some inroads on Hollywood — and that Michelle Yeoh’s recent Academy Award will make some Asian parents think twice before deterring their children from pursuing drama or theater.

Yet, in certain ways, I still feel trapped, encumbered by lingering prejudices against Asians in academe and the publishing world: Dad, as it turns out, was not altogether wrong. Certainly, the Students for Fair Admissions lawsuit that led to the dismantling of affirmative action revealed stereotyped assumptions on the part of Harvard against Asian-American candidates — however much we might disapprove of the Supreme Court decision.

Let’s not forget either that Asians also appear to suffer discrimination at graduate level admissions. Despite the pervasive “model minority” stereotype, faculty are least likely to respond to the queries of prospective female Asian students; as Inside Higher Ed reports,

There was a 29 percentage point gap at private colleges and universities in the response rate to white men and Chinese women. The next largest gap was a 21 percentage point gap in responses to those with an Indian male name, followed by a 19 percentage point gap for those with an Indian female name.

Finally, there is evidence to suggest that faculty of Asian descent also face higher hurdles when it comes to promotions and salaries. As I have stated multiple times on Medium and elsewhere — there is a reason why academe is referred to as “The Ivory Tower” — where few “beyond the pale,” literally and figuratively speaking, are allowed.

Yet, dwelling on discrimination can only take one so far: when a professor suggested that I avoid certain regions of the US — and the UK itself — for my doctoral work, I thought to myself, “well, what am I going to do? Wear a paper bag over my head for the rest of my life because some people don’t like me?” I felt the way I did when I decided I wanted to pursue English at graduate level, never mind my inconvenient name. But as Toni Morrison once said, “You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.” And that means all of the anachronistic assumptions.

As I’ve observed in another article, I will continue to say what has to be said and done — even if it makes my life one long, protracted fight. Because there’s no turning back when you realize that only you can free yourself. At my age, there’s no time for the likes of me to care what my parents, now dead and gone, think what a proper Asian should do. No time to care what prejudiced people of any color think either. I am freer than ever to flaunt myself as colorfully and proudly as Hurston did when she sauntered down Seventh Avenue in Harlem with her hat set at a jaunty angle.

I don’t know if I’ll ever feel as exuberant as “the cosmic Zora, belonging to no race nor time.” But I know I’m going to continue sharpening my oyster knife!