Tammy Conard-Salvo

Hey, Look! There’s Another Asian

Hey Look!

When I moved from Lubbock, Texas to Boston, Massachusetts, I experienced a culture shock, not atypical of one who has lived in a small community on the West Texas plains and has just moved to a large urban center. The traffic, the people, the cold weather, all constituted huge changes in lifestyle and environment. But I was very excited to be living in a city with a Chinatown and with multitudes of Asian restaurants and Asian people.

It had been so long since I had lived near a significant Asian-American population, and adjusting to an environment where I wasn’t the only Asian-American face was initially strange and somewhat disconcerting. But I was thrilled to see others who looked like me. I would poke my husband Michael and say, “Hey! There’s another one! Can you believe all the Asians living in Boston?!”

The transition, though, was not easy, and I continuously faced a set of questions that I didn’t expect to ask: Will I fit in? Have I been away from Asian-Americans too long? Do I look Asian? Will the Asian/Asian-American community discriminate against me because I’m only half Asian? What if people don’t think I’m Asian-American because my name doesn’t sound Asian and how will this affect my prospects for employment?

After living in Boston for nearly three years, I still do not have any solid answers to these questions, and I often worry about whether I am “Asian enough.” When I lived in Lubbock, I didn’t worry much about whether other Asian-Americans would accept me as one of their own because I did not have much contact with other Asian-Americans. In the department on campus where I worked, I was the only visible Asian-American and certainly one of very few who incorporated an awareness of diversity in the curriculum. My half-Koreanness never caused me to question my identity, except for those few occasions when a Caucasian, local West Texan thought I was Hispanic because the concept of mixed-race identity was unfathomable. I usually attributed this response to the fact that many West Texans did not have much contact with Asian-Americans of any kind, much less the Korean, Native American, and French Canadian variety.

I did want to move away from Lubbock because I felt isolated, and I missed being around other Asian-Americans, mixed-race or otherwise. When my husband was out on the job market for the first time, I implored him to apply for jobs in larger metropolitan areas, or at least areas that were more diverse than Lubbock. I also wanted opportunities for a career in multicultural affairs or a chance to work with diverse populations of students. Little did I know that living in a place of my dreams would produce so many questions about my identity, instead of eliminating them.

When I moved to a larger, more cosmopolitan, urban environment, I was no longer unique. There were many other Asian-Americans living near me, and no one was surprised or especially thrilled to see another Asian-American. In fact, I began to think about my status as a half-Korean, and I struggled and continue to struggle with the question, “Am I Asian enough?” Simply having an Asian background does not guarantee me some measure of knowledge or experience. I am no longer the expert on Korean-American culture because I am the only Korean-American in a campus department.

So, what does it mean to be Asian-American? There’s no litmus test involving the amount of smelly Asian groceries in the refrigerator or the shape of a person’s eyes. While Asian-American women writers like Amy Tan have reached mass popularity, rarely do we see an Asian-American character on a television show that doesn’t make us cringe with embarrassment. Remember the1990’s sitcom All American Girl? And don’t get me started on Lucy Liu, either. We all have enough to worry about without having to wonder how to use our Dragon Lady wiles to captivate men. Ultimately, the identity of Asian-Americans is fraught with concerns over myths and stereotypes and striking the balance between parental Asian values and mainstream American culture.

For Hapas like me, the situation is more complex. We deal with stereotypes of being the “exotic other.” We’re often neither accepted by mainstream American culture or the culture of our one Asian parent. Sometimes we Hapas are forced to identify ourselves by a single ethnicity rather than as multiracial, or, as in my case, we feel more immersed in Asian-American culture—until we come to realize that we don’t exemplify what many Asian-Americans think of as Asian-American.

All of these thoughts continue to play a part in my questions about identity. I don’t know whether Asian-Americans see me as a fellow Asian-American, but in my own mind, I’m as Asian-American as I can be. I may not have the petite frame, but I have my mother’s dark hair and almond shaped eyes. I can’t go a week without eating rice, and my refrigerator has, as my husband calls it, a “Korean smell,” just like my mother’s refrigerator. While these factors alone aren’t the definitive characteristics of an Asian-American, what is most important to my identity, in my opinion, is that my mother’s values are deeply ingrained in me, just as much as my American father’s are. And in the end, I am more comfortable calling myself a Hapa or half-Korean than simply Asian-American. Living in Boston has allowed me to consider finer distinctions of Asian-American identity, and while I didn’t previously deny or reject my half-Korean identity, it never occurred to me, while living in Lubbock, to define myself so narrowly. Now, I think the term Hapa is more accurate and precise, for it includes people like me.

So, there have, in fact, been many advantages to living in Boston, and I was very happy to be one of many Asian-Americans and Hapas living here. One high point was finding a wealth of Asian food. When I first arrived in Boston, I had gaped and gawked in the local chain grocery store because it carried many Asian groceries, from den-jang to udon noodles. In Lubbock, I was lucky to find canned chop suey vegetables in the ethnic aisles. In Boston, I managed to find a Korean market nearby that would supply me with fresh kimchi, sesame leaves, and chamae in the summertime. The first time I browsed through the tight, crowded aisles with my husband, I thought of my mother. I wanted her to be there with me, shopping for groceries, examining the quality of the items while muttering under her breath that some things were just too expensive. I also wanted her to feel proud that her daughter was able to ask the ahjuma, in Korean, whether or not she had a certain item that only someone who had lived in Korea or a Korean-American household would know about.

While living in Boston, I had to be prepared to use my Korean language skills more often than while living in Lubbock. This, too, caused me some anxiety. I have never felt self-conscious speaking Korean to my mother or my high school friends’ parents. I enjoyed teaching snippets and phrases to college friends, who thought it exotic to learn a language not offered in any public school curriculum. (This was before I realized that I didn’t like being the strange specimen under the glass). But since I moved away from home, I didn’t have much opportunity to use my Korean language skills other than when I called my mother. I anguished before going to find the Korean market. I wondered if I would be able to ask questions without hesitating or whether the owner would inform me that I had wandered into a Korean store, as if I didn’t know. I was afraid of feeling like a stranger in a place that should feel familiar, a store much like the stores I had shopped in with my mother. For some reason, I felt that I had been away from Korean-American culture so long that I had lost my Korean-Americanness and would, therefore, be treated badly. But none of these things happened. I didn’t stammer when I asked for an item and said thank you. I didn’t get strange or suspicious looks. It felt natural for me to be shopping in that store, and remarkably, I feel like this first trip to the market was a victory, a step back into the world I had left behind when I left home.

One day, after living in Boston for nearly three years, I walked over to a local office building to have lunch, and I decided to eat my sandwich in the atrium area, where a small jazz band was playing. It was nice to get away from my desk, eat a little something, and enjoy some music. Where else but in Boston can one hear a jazz band in an office building? A few minutes into my lunch, a group of small children showed up with their day care teachers to listen to the jazz band. These were probably the children of employees who worked in the office building. Maybe their mothers or fathers were researchers at the Harvard Medical School offices housed there. They were certainly a very diverse group of children. Out of the 20 I saw, maybe two were Caucasian. Most were East Asian, South Asian, or Hispanic. Where else but a city like Boston would children be exposed to different cultures and ethnicities?

But my husband is on the job market again, and we’re both interested in living in places very different from Boston. Many people would wonder why I would sacrifice all this—the diversity, the contact with various ethnic groups, never mind the other amenities of big city life—for the kind of life I tried to escape when I moved here in the first place. When I saw those children swaying to the music, I heard my own ticking clock, and I knew that if I didn’t sacrifice all that Boston had to offer, I would be sacrificing my chance to have the kind of life I could only have outside of a city like Boston—a life that may include a child who would receive all the cultural values that my husband and I would offer. In Boston, we would never have that chance, and all the amenities of ethnic diversity would go down the drain, not even experienced by overworked, underpaid professionals like us.

So at some point in the future, I may be entering a completely different life, where once again I will ask questions about my identity and place in a community. I may wonder why there aren’t people who look like me. If I have children, they may say, when we’re on a family vacation in a diverse city, “Hey, look! People here look just like me!” Or maybe not. Maybe with the kind of life I’m envisioning, my husband and I will have enough time and resources to provide our children with instruction about their cultural heritage and values. I hope that they will embrace their questions of identity because no matter where one lives, the questions never stop.