Hyphen magazine - Asian American arts, culture, and politics

I am so hyphen that I worry

I am so hyphen that I worry that over-publicity of this talk will provoke a backlash against cliquish Asians on campus with their polarizing ethnic pride.

I am so hyphen that I wouldn't take a McDonalds gift card and sweatshirt for fear of appearing cheap to my preppy, Wild Oats-eating friends. I am so hyphen I would not eat McDonalds in public.

I am so hyphen I don't know what it means to be Asian-American.

I am so hyphen that I'm annoyed I'm taking the time to type this because I should be studying.

Daily Hyphenating

I use chopsticks to beat eggs
Until they're fluffy and light
Memorizing your number
In Cantonese
Instinctively sounds right.
Still wear pajamas
With Asian cartoons
And there's nothing like
Sipping cold Vitasoy
On a hot summer noon.

I'm hyphen because...

I'm about to graduate as an Asian Studies major, and I still haven't found one good way to explains what that means.

Being Hyphen

When I was in China last semester, I was American. But with a lot of doubt about that fact. To many Chinese people, it just wasn't possible that I could look like them and not be Chinese. And if I wasn't Chinese, then I must be Korean, Japanese, Thai, Filipino, Cambodian, Mongolian... American didn't even seem to be on the radar. But if you've ever heard me speak Chinese - Mandarin, Cantonese, or any other dialect - you know I'm not. But my English? Oh, it's just fine. And in the States, my identifier is Chinese. I look the part, I eat and crave Chinese food nonstop, I play piano, and with thanks to high school and college teachers, I speak some Mandarin (not that it's the language of my heritage - those would be Cantonese and Shanghai dialect - but who's keeping track?). But I was born here, I've lived my whole life here.

So hyphen to me has to encompass a lot. It has to include my frustrations at rarely being just Chinese-American. It has to be me asking my friends if they like real Chinese food, because Panda Express just isn't anything like grandma's cooking. It has to be the fact that I embrace parts of America even as I reject other parts. It has to somehow represent how I didn't know children playing "squinty eyes" were making fun of people like me, because frankly, my eyes aren't all that "squinty." How was a seven year old me supposed to know that this image is one that's been attributed to Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and the ever ambiguous category of Asians in an often derogatory manner. "Hyphen" has to be never forgetting that my grandfather had to buy an identity on the black market to make it over here and yes, that he started a laundromat and a Chinese restaurant like so many other Chinese immigrants. And while I may not be an immigrant or first generation, that is all part of my past. So though sometimes people say I'm more Chinese than American or more American than Chinese, I don't see why I have to pick between the two. Because "hyphen" is more than just a connecting line between two worlds and two cultures, whether it's there or not, whether I'm Chinese-American or American-Chinese or an ABC, it's about not having to choose one or another identity. So if I want to eat ketchup with my Chinese dumplings, I can. That's hyphen.

why hyphen?

I am hyphen because I contribute to "a more complex representation of Asian America."

I hyphen by attending

I hyphen by attending asian-american events on campus