Growing up, the representation of Asian men in the American entertainment industry was quite dismal. Asian men were often portrayed as the sidekick, the nerd, the martial artist, the villain or the comic-relief. Seeing so few Asian roles gave me the impression that Asian lives did not matter. Not seeing any significant Asian model or Asian pop star in America magnified my feeling of insignificance. Growing up with Ken Jeong’s portrayal of a deranged gangster in The Hangover films or Mickey Rooney’s portrayal of a caricatured Japanese man in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, it is no wonder that among American adolescent students, Asian-Americans have the lowest self-esteem. The musical Miss Saigon and its inspiration, Madame Butterfly, depict an Asian woman falling for a white American. The only prominent Asian man in that musical is The Engineer, who is depicted as shifty and untrustworthy. Asian men were shown to be weak, undesirable and emasculated. It is no surprise that the least desirable male race is of an Asian man.
It was difficult to be proud of my Asian background when the rare representation of Asian men was that abysmal. Thus, I grew up hating the color of my skin. I would pray to God, asking him if he could make me white. I would be disappointed when I woke up in the morning, looked in the mirror and saw that I was still Asian. I began to distance myself from my parents’ culture, even criticizing it. I sometimes felt ashamed of my parents and their Asian antics, making sure that my classmates didn’t see them when they came to pick me up from school. I would feel more Canadian than I was Asian. I identified more with being gay than with being Asian, often seeking out LGBT films but not Asian films. I would avoid trying to speak Vietnamese as it always reminded me of the inadequacy I felt as an Asian boy. My parents would always speak to my brothers and I in Vietnamese, but we would reply in English.
Jin Hyun, a writer for NextShark, a leading source for Asian American and Asian news, who talked to other Asian-Americans about their experiences, perfectly encapsulated the experience of growing up Asian in a Western world: “With years of constant abuse and marginalization, it came as no surprise that all of these young adults had resented their Asian heritage at some point in their lives. As I spoke with more East, South and West Asian students around me, we realized after 20-something years of hating our racial identities, we were all suddenly in a rush to play catch up in exploring our roots. Despite coming from different areas of Asia, I discovered we shared similar adolescent traumas and we all desperately wished we hadn’t wasted so many years mistakenly thinking we had to sacrifice our Asian cultures to be American.”
It was only recently when I was about 23 years old, after years of resenting my racial identity, that I began to be proud of being Asian. I wanted to revisit Vietnam (as I’ve been there just once before) and live there for about a year so that I will be able to get in touch with my roots and be able to finally become fluent in Vietnamese. Of course, there were still moments here and there when I would revert and be ashamed of being Asian, such as racist comments from customers. However, I would always bounce back and am continually working on loving myself.
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