on identity
...and it's not about being "enough".
Édouard Vuillard, The Album
“This is not a meditation on identity and pride — that is, whether I am too Chinese or disabled enough — nor a caught-between-two-worlds or my-immigrant-parents-don’t-understand-me story. I am actually not Chinese enough and am very, very disabled, and I am hella okay with that. Haven’t we all seen enough of these types of memoirs, anyway?”
- Alice Wong, Year of the Tiger
This quote from Alice Wong really struck me. For most of my 20’s, I held an agony that afflicts many people — Who am I?
Often, this question comes with thoughts that meditate on identity and what that means to us. I think the struggle of identity is not something that is exclusive to ethnicity…we can absolutely feel at conflict with a multitude of factors that can contribute to the sense of self we have for ourselves.
When I think on how I wanted to write my thoughts out for this essay, it stemmed from a conversation I’ve had with many Asian-Americans: this idea of being enough for Asian culture or American culture. I think people often see this as a tipping scale — too much of one thing and not enough of the other, and vice versa. I don’t agree with that.
I think who we are is much more nuanced than that, and I don’t think that it is up to society to define what is “enough” for anybody. Is it not enough to simply just be — especially with so much going on already? Why do we feel so pressured to answer that question? Who we are is so much more than a tipping scale between cultures. We are multitudes of lived experiences and possibilities that make up our thoughts, emotions, dreams.
The journey to submerge one’s self in their desired culture is a beautiful undertaking, and I wish we felt less of the need to answer of what is enough and had more of a desire to answer what is. What does enough even mean, anyway? Society doesn’t have some kind of tangible, accomplishable metric for what is enough — so why should you? What is the meaning you want to make for yourself? What is the truth that you hold and you know is authentic to who you really are? What is going to be the journey that you want to take yourself on? And who cares if that’s enough for anybody — this life is your lived truth and experiences. Is it enough for you?
“For a long time I felt bad. I wondered why I didn’t want to learn Japanese, why I didn’t already speak Japanese, why I would rather go to Paris or Istanbul or Barcelona rather than Tokyo. But then I thought, Who cares? Did anyone ask John F. Kennedy if he spoke Gaelic and visited Dublin or if he ate potatoes every night or if he collected paintings of leprechauns? So why are we supposed to not forget our culture? Isn’t my culture right here since I was born here?”
-Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer
I love this passage from The Sympathizer so much. I have always wondered why there was such a persistent pressure on this generation’s Asian-Americans to answer these questions. Our identities are so unique to us…there is a gradient that exists within us of everything we have been and could possibly be.
I want to be as Khmer as I possibly can be. I want to speak the language, cook the food, and practice the rituals that have spiritual significance to Khmer culture. You know what I also want to do? I want to simply just be a 28 year old guy that lives in America. I want to do all the silly things that come with being a young professional adult and I want to share those experiences with my other friends within American culture.
Both are possible, and neither are measured by some arbitrary metric that satisfies what is “enough”. Because I am who I am, regardless of if that is enough for someone else.
“The many identities you hold and your lived experiences are not in conflict with each other; they make you sharp, whole, and extraordinary”
- Alice Wong
This excerpt from Alice Wong does a great job of tying in all of my thoughts on this. I think that the versions of yourself that exist within you aren’t at conflict with each other — in fact, they make you, well, you. You are everything that is and isn’t. Your being is still whole, regardless if you feel like you are enough of something or not. And I think that means a lot…to understand that you are the sum of everything that you have lived through, with much more ahead on the journey toward self discovery.
Identity is much more than what you are “enough” of. Identity, ultimately, is who you have been, who you are, and who you want to be. So what does that mean to you?