My dad came from China, my Mom from Tokyo. I grew up in an upper-middle-class white suburb and always felt I was supposed to be a way I’m not. Partly it was US/Asian issues. Me and my friends had different lifestyles. I worked 5 days a week throughout the year at my dad’s restaurant starting in 7th grade while my friends did summer camp and sports.
I’m really interested in immigrants and children of immigrants and why they left. I grew up hearing my mom’s story of growing up in Tokyo. She was 5 when the US dropped the bombs, and she saw houses burning and dead people’s feet sticking out from under blankets. I wonder what are the privileges I often take for granted having been US born? And what are the costs of immigration?
— Shirley Yee
In 1982, Chinese garment workers in New York went out on strike. The community groups such as the benevolent societies — the leadership in Chinatown — have members who belong to the union, and the union has worked hard on our relationship with the community. About 90% of the garment shop owners are Chinese, so that makes disputes in the workplace very sensitive. When there’s a campaign against a big retailer, then the community rallies together.
The Chinese teachers in Chinatown have children of garment workers in their classrooms, and they expressed an interest in helping the striking families. They already knew many of the parents, and felt concerned about kids not getting much attention because their parents worked such long hours.
But it’s not the same with Chinese people who live in the suburbs. They generally don’t get involved in Chinatown issues. They come relate to Chinatown for voter registration and politics, that’s about it. There’s even some a lot of anti-union feeling. The Asian Labor Group has worked to diffuse some of the impression of unions as corrupt white thugs.
— May Chen
Many Taiwanese American families are like us whose parents are professionals and who are in the U.S. not for economic reasons but to give their children “better” education. Which places us on the higher side of the socioeconomic ladder and is a side of me that I feel ashamed of often. I feel ashamed compared to my friends whose parents came with nothing. It is hard to ask my Cambodian or Laotian American friends what their parents do for a living because of my privilege. I am ashamed to be a stereotypical Taiwanese person in America with an affluent background. Of course there are those who don’t fit this description but how often is Taiwanese voice heard anyway? We are considered a subgroup of the Chinese despite the fact that our experiences and many aspects of our cultures are totally different. What I am most deeply ashamed of is people within the Asian community labeling and judging the Asian groups with less money or social status. There are many of those people in the Taiwanese community, forgetting that their own ancestors once lived in deprivation, oppressed by the Chinese and Japanese. When others use the “people of color vs. whites” dichotomy to discuss disparities and inequalities I often feel funny because in many ways I fall on the “white” side, because I’m light-skinned, have a college education, write and speak eloquently if I want to. I notice that alot of middle upper class Asian kids like to act “lower than their class” and I am not sure what is the psychological motivation behind that but I know that when I do the same, it is comforting. When I display “ghetto-ness” in speech and act, I feel closer to my Asian peers who face discrimination more often and who struggle economically, and don’t feel like I’m “selling out” to be more white… I feel more empowered when I identify with people of color who do struggle a lot to pursue the American Dream.
— Betty Kuo