MARISSA WU
April 16, 2024 at 10:38 AM
One day, in the throes of a New York City summer, my mother called:
We’re going to Taipei this Christmas, she said.
My stomach dropped at the sudden change in plans, followed by a cocktail of emotions: anxiety, dread and irritation. I had been looking forward to the Grand Canyon trip we had been planning—a bucket-list experience for any American family. Plus, I had just moved to NYC the year prior and was still finding my footing; it had been a long, lonely year trying to make friends and figure out where I belonged in a town packed with personalities. An international trip would be draining (#introvertlife) and ultimately mean putting my NYC efforts on the backburner. But what rattled me the most was that this meant I would finally have to step foot in what my friends and I jokingly called the “Motherland.”
Growing up, my many children-of-immigrants friends often spent their school holidays in their designated motherland, often China or India. But I was somewhat of an anomaly. Though we had family in Asia, too, we never went, and that was fine with me. As a third-generation Asian-American, I have always felt more American than Asian. Which, of course, looking at me, is a problem, because I very much look Chinese. But nothing else makes me “Asian” in the sense of the word. I obstinately refused to go to Chinese school on Saturday mornings growing up and am illiterate in all Chinese dialects. If it weren’t for my grandparents, we wouldn’t have celebrated any holidays. And it’s hard for me to fully express how I feel in Chinatown when people come up to me chattering away, my only reply being a blank face and a very American, “I’m sorry?” Maybe it’s a feeling of shame, embarrassment, regret or inadequacy…or all four.