Beyond the Boxes
One Personal Journey Toward a Liberated Asian American Female Identity
By Jennifer Chen Wang, June 2002
What is often mentioned in “Minority Studies” is the notion of “coming to voice.” My understanding of
this process is that it involves conceptualizing one’s definitive life experiences and responses to
such experiences and vocalizing them, commonly through literature and other art forms, in a way that
challenges the oppressive framework that initially created such experiences. Because of the impact
that “coming to voice” has on both a personal and societal level, I believe it to be incredibly
empowering. Thus, in this paper, I will explore my own “coming to voice” in regards to experiences
related to my identity as a Taiwanese/Asian American woman.
Childhood
i already knew by age five what other kids thought of
fried rice, wheat gluten, chow mein, stir-fried green beans, tofu;
of the puny girl who couldn’t score free-throws in P.E. but who must’ve known karate;
of the class nerd who didn’t get math problems right;
of the slant-eyed kid who couldn’t speak Chinese or Japanese or any other ching-chong-sounding languages.
The anomalies didn’t prompt them to question the stereotypes.
As a young child growing up in Miami, Florida, I hated being different. I was always sensitive to ways
in which I did not resemble my classmates. Somehow, not a single year in school passed in which a
teacher or classmate did not single me out because of my height. I was always the shortest kid, every
year. To boot, although there were many Latino students at my school, I was always (in my memory) the
only Asian kid in the classroom, and I was also often the quietest.
In “Basic Group Identity,” Isaacs discusses the ways in which the physical body shapes identity. He
quotes Paul Schilder: “The body image is a social phenomenon. Our own body image is never isolated,
always accompanied by the body images of others” (Isaacs, 38). He adds that “physical characteristics
serve as a badge of identity. They figure with high visibility and powerful glandular effect in
relations between groups…” (Isaacs, 39). Throughout my childhood in Miami, my “yellowness” was
most pronounced in the presence of “white” and “brown” peers, thus enhancing my sense of social
isolation and difference from others. Moreover, my “yellowness” as visible to others shaped their
perceptions and treatment of me. Although I was unnaturally shy throughout much of elementary school
(I say “unnaturally” because at home, I was not this way), my teachers seemed to expect it, and never
encouraged me to speak out. Later, when my family lived in Atlanta, Georgia, I would often encounter
such remarks as, “Wow, your English is really good!” and the classic “Where are you from?” or “How
long have you been here?” It was clear that my physical appearance marked me automatically as
different, even foreign.
I felt that it was my “yellowness” in combination with my parents’ culture that prevented me
from “having” as much as my peers seemed to have, and from “being like other kids.” Somehow, I formed
idealized perceptions of what “American” kids had that I did not—sugary cereals, Barbie accessories, and
slinkies. All I had was rice porridge, the Barbie dolls minus car and house, and my sister (whom my mom
claimed was the best “play toy” when it came to playing. She had never even heard of slinkies). To
compensate for what I felt were my losses, I constantly ate at my friend’s house (always asking for
cereal), played with her Barbie house every day, and stole another friend’s slinky when she left it at
my house.
Not only did I want to “have” what my peers had, but I wanted to look like them and like my favorite TV
cartoon characters (most notably, Rainbow Brite, Jem, She-Ra). According to Berreman in “Race, Caste,
and Other Invidious Distinctions in Social Stratification,” “[t]he consequences of birth-ascribed
stratification are self-fulfilling and self-perpetuating, for although low status groups do not
adopt views of themselves or their statuses which are consistent with the views held by their superiors,
they are continually acting them out and cannot avoid internalizing some of them and the self-doubts
they engender…” (Berreman, 29). Growing up, I internalized the American beauty standard. Like other
Asian Americans as discussed by Amy Uyematsu who, in experienced “extreme self-hatred,” (Uyematsu, 577)
I wanted to be white. In first and second grade, I would often “borrow” my mom’s plastic hair curlers
and try, with clumsy seven-year-old hands, to ensnare each and every despised lock, hoping that when
I took out the curlers, I would all of a sudden be this beautiful girl. Needless to say, it never quite
worked according to plan.
Family
When he gets angry, your face becomes stone hard, your mouth set as rigid as ice.
When he screams in piercing Taiwanese, punctuated with cursing barks,
You cover your ears.
When he pounds his fist on our coffee table, when he calls you Idiot! Useless! Stupid!
And other things I can’t understand exactly,
Why don’t you scream back? Why don’t you retaliate with all the things you do for him but that
he never appreciates—the years of laundry, of hemming his pants, of taking his business calls, of
cleaning his study?
Why don’t you leave?
Why didn’t you leave?
When you realized on your wedding night that this man who studied in America and had a prestigious family in Taiwan,
Was not the kind gentle charismatic man you had hoped for?
That his temper exploded at the drop of a hat?
You tried to show me that he wasn’t the only kind of father—
Your own father, who passed away when you were sixteen, was quiet and gentle, never ever raised his
voice, you said.
Your second oldest brother showed only kindness to his wife and daughters.
And remember? You said. Remember how when Sah-Gu visited us when you were five, he was so nice to you?
He gave you a sparkly pink necklace.
When I was in high school, I thought,
If you can be so content in your imprisonment,
What does it mean for me?
How can I learn to raise my voice and not make mistakes with marriage and not be trapped like you are,
If you never show me it can be done?
Recently you wrote a letter to me.
I never loved your dad, it said.
You told me you had never been in love with anyone, just with your writing,
And that you hoped I would have a chance like you never did to experience being in love.
But be careful, you said.
There were many reasons I rejected my family at some point during my early adolescence. My
relationship with my parents was characterized primarily by misunderstandings, anger and frustration,
and the power struggles that often take place between Parent and Teen. Otherwise, we did not “bond”
or spend time together, or otherwise share information about our personal, extra-familial lives
with each other. I also had many exceptionally heated conflicts with my father, whom I often wished
was not really my father. I rejected my parents because, to me, they did not really know how to be
parents. I also felt that they had rejected me, for they always highlighted my failures more than my
successes. Further, society had taught me to view “American culture” as standard and as the most
progressive. In comparison with all things “American,” my parents’ culture seemed
irrational, backward, and the less ideal of the two. And, because I had become acculturated to some
degree to “American culture,” I began to see my parents with double vision: On the one hand, they
were my parents—familiar, special and normal simultaneously, a part of me. On the other hand, they
were strange, speaking English in their tonal accents and engaging in all the habits that made them
different from other people around me. Basically, society had taught me to see my parents the way others
did. When I realized, somewhat after childhood, that my mom spoke English with an accent, I was
startled because all my life, it had always sounded “normal” to me.
Later, in high school, I experienced the desire to “know my roots.” This started with an eighth grade
English project in which I had to create a travel guide about a country. I chose Taiwan, which, at that
point, I knew almost nothing about. As a child, I had conceptualized Taiwan as a vague space somewhere
outside of the United States where there were lots of people who looked like my family and where a lot of
cheap products were manufactured. If I were handed a map, I probably would not have been able to
locate it. Learning about my parents’ country helped me realize that one, Taiwan was a real place,
and two, that it consisted of a larger culture (or cultures) that reflected my parents’ values, beliefs,
and customs. The following summer, I visited Taiwan with my mother and sisters, after which I
returned with a more positive sense of my cultural heritage. I also began reading Asian American
literature, which helped me feel as though my experiences as a Taiwanese American were validated. I
no longer felt that I had to be “American.” During high school, I joined the International Club,
participated in International Day by putting together a booth about Taiwan with other Taiwanese
Americans and by sporting my mom’s silk dresses and/or blouses, made friends with other Asian
Americans, and did a History Day research paper on 19th and early 20th century discrimination against
Chinese Americans.
Womanhood
if only i had known
my body would be a battleground between your fetishistic gazes and my flailing attempts to keep
your thoughts at bay,
I would’ve armed myself with sarcastic retorts and penis-shrinking remarks.
My body, my territory to defend.
My body, eyes brown like muddy earth during a downpour, skin warm like honey, hair dark as shadows
and straight like falling rain.
My body, not your power trip, not your ego-booster.
Not your “little treasure.”
My eyes are slanted but my cunt isn’t.
Need I be clearer?
*******
Don’t you dare try to take away my voice,
The expression of my soul, my spirit, my will,
My Anger.
It’s taken me twenty-one years but finally I have found it,
The Voice within as well as the Voice without.
So you think I talk too much, that I ask too many questions,
That I think too much.
You don’t know how to treat a man, you say.
In your eyes dance graceful geishas, lotus beauties,
Delicate to the touch and ready to serve your every whim.
I am not that woman in your fantasy—
I am a roaring fire, a shooting star—
I have dreams and aspirations, and they don’t amount to
Finding a man.
They don’t amount to
Being at your beck and call and making you “feel better” on bad days and feeling just so damn lucky
that I have You, the “Quintessential Western Man”.
Be honest.
I’m probably your worst nightmare.
It’s taken me two weeks to see through you,
To see how even though you hate the system you are a part of it.
To see how when you feel oppressed, you oppress others.
It’s taken me two weeks, but finally,
I have kicked you out of my life,
And regained my Voice.
Although for the most part, my dating experiences have been fairly “benign” or, in rare cases, very
positive, I experienced subordination as a woman in at least two very distinct dating experiences, and
subordination as an Asian woman in at least one of those.
I think my “discovery” of feminism resulted from a relationship I had when I was sixteen. At the time, I
thought that dating another person of color would mean a greater sense of shared experiences and
perceptions of society and American culture. Karl (to use a pseudonym) was Pakistani American, and
during our year-long friendship, we had routinely joked about the way “white people” never
understood “Asian stuff” and had to use fake tanning lotion to look like us. Because he seemed
like such a good, understanding confidant, I never suspected that he could possibly harbor the sexist
views that he did, and even weeks after we began dating, I refused to believe it.
I am not sure how I came to possess the mentality that, in conflict, I was automatically in the wrong,
my logic automatically the flawed set in a clash of words. I am also not sure how Karl came to have
the complex that, in order to be complete as a sixteen-year-old male, he would have to finally have
sex (with a girl). Likely, we were both victims of a patriarchy so pervasive that a male-female
relationship once based on friendship could become an unprecedented play-out of power strategies, changed
psychological self-concepts, and over-feminized/masculinized roles. Put simply, Karl wanted
us to have sex, and, not having become comfortable with my sexuality yet, I did not. Rather than respect
my decision, he employed various arguments and rationales:
“What are you afraid of? Your reputation? You know I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
"There’s nothing wrong with having sex. Everybody else does.”
“Don’t you love me? Listen, I want to share myself with you. I want my first time to be with you.”
I thought that our relationship was a Sex Ed video gone bad. Although it made me feel uncomfortable more
often than not, I compromised by being sexually intimate with Karl without “going all the way.” In
bed, Karl would point to parts of my body and say, “See this? This is mine.” Once, in a moment of
profound philosophical wisdom, he informed me of the penis’s symbolic association with power (to which
I burst out laughing until he angrily responded that he was serious). He sometimes, affectionately,
referred to me as his “ho” (I am not kidding; that was his pet name for me). Once, when I let myself end
up in a rather uncompromising position, he tried to “go for it” and I shoved him away. My trust in him
was already shaken, but I felt I had done something to deserve his wrongful behavior, and I also
felt that if our relationship did not stay afloat, I would have failed. I resented him and felt guilty
for resenting him.
I know I tried to speak up for myself, and when he did not understand my reasons or did not think
them “valid”, I resorted to explaining them slowly and carefully or finding answers that I thought he
could understand. But everything I offered, he shot down. I began to question myself: Maybe he was
right and it was silly, even abnormal, for a girl of my age to not want to have sex already. In a
seemingly endless cycle, my mind took turns hating him, hating myself, feeling unsure of my reasons, and,
in an attempt to justify my continued participation in our relationship, trying to convince
myself I still had some remnants of feelings for him and that since he was a good person, I must be
wrong in some way. I could not let myself end the relationship because it would reflect my failure as a
girlfriend.
I know that my naïve relationship with Karl was not even nearly the worst of the best; he was never
physically abusive to me, and I only tolerated it for four months. But I also know that this
relationship must have been partly the reason why afterward, I always felt like a part of me had been
taken away when I engaged in sexual relations with someone; why I always felt ashamed and uncomfortable
in sexual situations; why denying someone sex made me feel undesirable to them, unworthy of them, and
guilty. It was only recently, as a twenty-one-year-old, that I could feel the liberation of
discovering that I can be both sexual and empowered, empowered in my sexuality even, that my
sexuality was mine to enjoy, or mine period. That nobody else owned it.
What came sooner than comfort with my sexuality was a feminist way of thinking that helped me to
better understand myself and my relationships. In my logic, (heterosexual) guys valued me (as well as
girls in general) for my sexual worth and not much else, except in rare cases. I wanted to be valued for
more. I was also sick of being put in boxes. Therefore, I sought to dissociate myself with my
gender, and because I also did not want to participate in masculine culture, I became more
childlike than anything else. I denounced “(popular) feminine culture” and with full
intent, dressed in a variety of decidedly unfashionable ensembles. Later, I stopped shaving my
legs or wearing bras. In doing all this, I was unwittingly perpetuating the devaluation of femininity
that bolsters patriarchy, for I myself bought into the devaluation of femininity. Moreover, I had not
yet learned how to speak up in the face of sexism or racism. I had not yet learned to scream when
angry.
Several years later, after I have studied about patriarchy, the intersections of race and gender that
form a “double oppression” for women of color, and “Asian fetishism,” I am confronted with an example
that perfectly reflects a racist patriarchal ideology. In David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly, Song
explains to a judge the West’s “international rape mentality toward the East”: “The West thinks of
itself as masculine…so the East is feminine…Her mouth says no, but her eyes say yes. The West
believes the East, deep down, wants to be dominated—because a woman can’t think for herself…You
expect Oriental countries to submit to your guns, and you expect Oriental women to be submissive to your
men” (Hwang, 62).
Recently, in fact, less than a month before this paper will be submitted, I dated a Euro-American man
(who, for purposes here, we will call George) who claimed to have been a professional Thai boxer in
Asia. I thought George was a very good, kind person, as well as intelligent and open-minded, but I
thought it strange that he constantly called me a “girl” in ways I found subtly patronizing and that,
despite his own radical views supporting aspects of anarchy, he was not incredibly accepting of my
liberal/radical political views. I started getting the feeling that I was a “pet” of some sort to
him, but dismissed these thoughts. One day, George came over drunk, and we got into an argument
which resulted in him expressing his previously obscured views about me. He told me, in an intense
tone, that he felt that I “talk” and “think” “too much”. He told me that he was not sure what kind
of “feminist books” I have been reading but that it was all “bullshit.” I needed to learn how to treat
a Man, he said, and what he wanted in a woman was support and recognition of himself as a “good guy.”
He informed me that he never dated “American women” because they apparently do not know how
to “appreciate” and “respect” guys. “I thought you were different, Jenny. I thought you came from
somewhere,” he said. “I come from Georgia,” I replied. “Yeah, but I thought you had culture.”
George’s views clearly show that, as a sexist man, he could not accept a woman who was opinionated,
independent, and demanded respect. Because he had internalized the stereotype that Asian women were
passive and submissive to men, he preferred dating them to “American” women. Because I am Asian
racially, he felt that, despite my American upbringing, I must have an “Asian essence” that makes
me “different” from other Americans. He also clearly views women’s roles in relation to men’s needs
and desires. Quoting Einstein, he misconstrued the meaning: “Behind every great man is a good woman…
that’s what I want.” He inadvertently labeled himself as a Great Man who deserved a woman who
would “respect” him. George had bought into at least some aspects of the “international rape
mentality.”
Conclusion
My life experiences show that the formulation of my identity occurred against a social background, in
other words, in relation to the people around me—my family, my peers, and my lovers. It was only when
I could peer into the lens through which others viewed me that I could reclaim myself and
conceptualize an identity independent from society’s categorizations of me. While I did
internalize many oppressive ideologies, thus perpetuating my own oppression, understanding these
ideologies and the ways in which they function through hegemony serves as a “self reclaiming” process
that enables me to challenge all forms of oppression that attempt to construct my identity for
me. Coming to voice is a very important part of that process because it functions to crack these
ideologies and expose them. Thus, the shattering of oppressive ideologies can happen only amidst a
plethora of voices, tired of being silent, that erupt and crescendo into a deafening chorus.
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Posted 6/12/02
