Continued Ruminations on American Identity

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My Prius is a vehicle for distance learning. After dropping off and before picking up kids, I have at about two hours to freely explore a full range of topics without concern over appropriateness. I often listen to audiobooks, music with explicit language, podcasts such as This American Life, The Moth, Alt Latino, and All Songs Considered. Two books that I’ve recently listened to on public library-borrowed e-audiobooks relate to different aspects of my own identity: the memoir Fresh off the Boat by Eddie Huang speaks to my upbringing as a second-generation Asian-American, and I can connect to the strong, female voice of Amy Schumer in The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo.

Listening to Eddie Huang narrate his story felt like listening to a neighborhood friend talking about growing up. Like many people I grew up with, he curses emphatically, gets into fights, represents hip-hop culture, and has immigrant parents. Huang’s parents migrated from Taiwan, and his family lived in the D.C. area then moved to Florida. As an East Coaster born to Asian parents, I can relate to the importance of food in his family. Food is what keeps the family together and is its own language through which they can communicate their love and appreciation of one another. His father was a successful restaurant owner, and his mother cooked traditional Taiwanese food. His parents often fought and his mother seemed unhappy, but her meals helped unite the family.

Many of the regular conflicts he experienced also existed in my household. His father was physically and verbally abusive like my father, a style of parenting that was common and accepted in many other immigrant families. And while his father did not give much emotional or moral support, he gave him material things such as a luxury car. Another motif in the immigrant experience is the clash of traditional and American cultures that comes about in humorous and awkward ways. One hilarious part of Huang’s story is when his mother has green bean casserole for the first time. She did not eat American food, and when she ate the casserole from Eddie’s friend’s mom, this is what transpired:

"Oh! Oh! Oh my God! What is this?"

"I told you! Green bean casserole."

"Casser- who?"

"Casserole, Mom. Like when Cantonese people put stuff in clay pots. That's a casserole."

"What's it mean, though?"

"I dunno, it's just casserole."

"We need more! How do we make this casserole?"

"I don't know, I'll call Warren."

Later that day, Warren came over with a huge dish of green bean casserole for my mom. He was so happy she liked it since she was so picky most of the time. For the first time, my mom was eating food from a non-Chinese home and she loved it. Who would have known it would be Mrs. Neilson's green bean casserole?

This incident prompted Huang to dedicate himself to making delicious Thanksgiving meals. He watched cooking shows and learned to brine turkey. Figuring out how to cook American meals is a typical struggle for immigrant families and represents the rich flavors of America’s melting pot. We need to embrace and appreciate the mingling of different cultures in this country.

It’s fascinating to follow Huang on his journeys throughout childhood and adulthood. While he ultimately created his own well-respected food establishment, BaoHaus which serves Taiwanese food in NYC, he experienced many other career paths including hustling on the street selling CD’s and drugs and becoming a corporate lawyer. He describes all the events in his life candidly and unapologetically. While he had many years of being involved in illegal activity and failing in school, Huang had moments of important self-discovery including a trip to Taiwan which helped him connect to his cultural roots. An important part of my young adulthood was going to the Philippines and traveling on my own, speaking broken Tagalog, taking jeepneys, and socializing with people my own age. Visiting lands of our ancestors is an important phase in understanding one’s identity.

Amy Schumer’s personal narrative is comical, well-crafted, and inspiring. It gave me a more nuanced understanding of her celebrity personality and reminded me that every person, famous or not, experiences suffering and loss as well as happiness and success. I was surprised to learn about her family’s struggles. Her father was an alcoholic later diagnosed with MS, and her mother seemed to enter into one unhealthy relationship after another. Schumer also struggled with relationships and was a victim of domestic abuse for many years. She tells her story with such grace and wit and admits her weaknesses yet manages to persevere and succeed in the field of comedy.

Listening to her story, I was inspired by her hustle and courage. She started out struggling to do stand up and ended up selling out large arenas such as Madison Square Garden. I could relate to her love for New York City. She grew up on Long Island then moved to the city as a young woman and has chosen this city as her permanent residence. She went from struggling to pay rent for a tiny apartment to owning her own terrace apartment in Manhattan. I, too, am a native and proud New Yorker. I grew up in Queens and have lived within the five boroughs all my life and love the multicultural and cosmopolitan culture of this city. Another commonality we have is a love of drinking wine and eating.

A characteristic I admire about Schumer is her openness in discussing all things female and sexual. She writes candidly about her romantic relationships including losing her virginity. One hilarious part of the book is when she describes her only one one-night stand:

I’m so sorry to disappoint anyone who thinks I walk around at all times with a margarita in one hand and a dildo in the other. Maybe the misunderstanding comes from the fact that, onstage, I group together all my wildest, worst sexual memories—a grand total of about five experiences over the course of 35 years. When you hear about them back-to-back it probably sounds like my vagina is a revolving door at Macy’s during Christmastime. But I talk about these few misadventures because it’s not that funny or interesting to hear about someone’s healthy, everyday sex life. Imagine me onstage saying, “So last night I got in bed with my boyfriend and we held each other in a supportive, loving way, and then he made sweet love to me.” The crowd would walk out, and I’d walk out with them.

I appreciate how casually and nonchalantly she writes about her sexual experiences and her body, communicating the idea that women should not be ashamed of or reticent about their bodies and relationships. She emphasizes the importance of being honest and open.

Schumer also confronts and shares her experiences of being physically and verbally abused by a man she loved. While her book is not a self-help one, she does empower women to be open and honest about their own relationships and to be strong. She states, “I know my worth. I embrace my power”. This could be a mantra for all women. It reminds us that we need to use our power to create and maintain healthy relationships and to succeed in our pursuits of happiness. And that in order to use our power, we must embrace and love our selves, regardless of our impurities, insecurities, and weaknesses.   

These two texts help break stereotypes and expectations of how certain people behave based on their ethnicity or gender. They offer broader understandings of what it means to be American. No matter where we are from or where we live, our families, values, and actions affect and reflect who we are, and the more we share and listen to each other’s stories, the richer we are.  

More Ruminations on American Identity

It’s been 22 days since my last post. I am sorry that I have not made time to sit and write. However, I did use my time to complete final projects for sabbatical classes, bake cookies for parties, make jars of trail mix to give as presents to the kids’ teachers, and spend time with friends and family at parties and restaurants. It’s been festive and frenetic. But alas, the holiday vacation has arrived, and I will be sure to do the hardest work of writing, sitting down for an extended period of time and letting my fingers tap along rows of buttons as I contemplate and communicate the ideas on my mind. At the moment, while my husband and children watch Elf, I sit at the dining room table and write.  

In the vast landscape of American culture, there has been a growing representation of diverse cultures and voices in literature and media. I want to continue writing about identity which I began writing about In an earlier post, “What Does America Stand For?”. One book that deepens my understanding of this question is Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.

Anyone who calls America home should read this novel. Yaa Gyasi artfully weaves together several characters’ stories of the slave trade in Ghana, the Middle Passage, slavery in the U.S., the Great Migration in America, and modern day. The book takes the readers through the harrowing and heartbreaking lives of families forcefully separated, the savage treatment of slaves, and the repercussions of slavery on race relations. It forces us to confront the trauma and scars left behind by over two hundred years of the brutal business of slavery.

The novel begins with an unlikely union between Effia, daughter of an Asante, and James, a British man of power who captures women and holds them in a dungeon before shipping them as slaves to the New World. While young girls are trapped in the dungeon, Effia, daughter of a tribal leader, is forced to live a lonely life in the Cape Coast Castle as the wife of James. This is one example of bondage seen in the text. Each subsequent chapter focuses on a different character who has a connection to this character and this place.

The next chapter is about Esi, a fifteen year old girl trapped in James’ Castle Dungeon. She is the daughter of a warrior but was captured and now stands ankle-deep in excrement, wishing to be freed, then later raped by a British officer. Her child will go on to be a slave in the U.S. These characters’ lives and legacies continue throughout the book. Much later in the story, Sonny, a descendant of Esi, struggles with segregation and drugs. For him, “the practice of segregation meant that he had to feel his separateness as inequality, and that was what he could not take.” (244).

The story moves mostly in chronological order and by the end, it is modern day Alabama and New York. We, the readers, can see how the characters’ lives are linked. Marjorie and Marcus, two college students who meet at a party, return home to their roots in Ghana. Marjorie holds the black stone necklace, a family heirloom, the stone that Esi, in the beginning of the novel, hid in the “river of shit” in James’ Castle. Marcus, visiting this country for the first time, becomes immersed in its elements. Together, they confront where their ancestors suffered as slaves but also learn that they can rise above the past and float in the present.  

Highs and Lows

Thursday, November 30th began with celebration of my son Emerson’s 8th birthday. In the morning, he blew out a candle on a pumpkin chocolate chip muffin, and we sang Happy Birthday and gave him gifts: a Justice League comic book, Green Lantern action figure, and dozens of kisses. The day was filled with moments of nostalgia, recounting his birth in 2009 at St. Vincent’s Hospital, looking back at historical pictures of the first time meeting his sister, Ate Jazzy, several toddler pictures of him holding a plastic bat or empty beer bottles (don't worry; my husband and I drank the beer). Throughout the day, my son was treated like a local celebrity, his family, friends, teachers, and classmates giving him extra attention. It was a day of delights, including a dinner of Japanese food, his preferred cuisine.

The celebratory spirit dwindled around bedtime when I noticed nits in his hair and had to spend 45 minutes combing through and eradicating them, something I have had to do several times since the kids started elementary school. By the time I was done, there were no tears; just strands of hair and exhausted bodies.

Around 9:30, the whole family was asleep though I could not go to bed because my blood sugar had risen above 250. One device that helps me manage diabetes is a Dexcom continuous glucose monitor (CGM); when blood sugar is above 180, it beeps every fifteen minutes; this constant sound does not allow one to sleep. Instead, I took a correction bolus of insulin, went to the attic to do yoga, meditation, and read a few chapters of Wonder. Eventually, my blood sugar normalized and I went to bed.

Unrest became a theme of the night. I had a dreadful dream: I was at a forum where Trump was yelling rhetoric against immigrants and spitting into a microphone then he came over to me and yelled at me, words I don’t recall. I remember feeling powerless and angry. Then I made a poster and wrote the word HOPE in bold letters. This woke me up around four a.m. along with a beeping CGM; this time, low blood sugar: 70.

Again I awoke, having to confront the horrifying reality that the man I dreaded in my dream is still POTUS. This is the most unbearable hardship, worse than lice or diabetes; at least the latter areas are manageable and in my control. When my sugar is high, take insulin; when low, load up on carbohydrates. When most of the US government supports a tax plan that will benefit the top 1% of the nation and add to the national debt, when the president vilifies and ousts young Dreamers but does not vilify men in government who have been accused of sexual harassment, it is difficult to stay positive.

My dream, however, reminds me of the importance of HOPE. We must work together as a democracy, regardless of political parties, to equally distribute power and wealth, and to act with more integrity and decency toward all citizens, documented or undocumented. To voice my concerns about the current GOP tax plan, I called NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (212-688-6262) and Congressman Dan Donovan (718-351-1062). The least we can do as constituents is talk to our elected officials about current policy.

The only nightmare we cannot awake from is that of silence and inaction. The only way to have hope is to have and share a voice, to take action against injustice and oppression. There is an imbalance of power in this country that threatens our democracy. In order to celebrate our nation, our democracy, we must work together to balance our highs and lows.