A Letter to My Younger Asian American Self
Now that I’m twice your age, I can assure you of this: You don’t need to be ashamed of your story
Dear Young Julie,
You won’t be aware of this for nearly another two decades, but May is Asian Pacific American Heritage month. I can picture you now as I tell you this, 17 years old with brows furrowed, sprawled out on that perpetually disheveled bed surrounded by posters of smoldering pop star gazes, wondering “Why would I celebrate that?”
And I get it. Up to this point, being Asian American feels like wearing too-tight wool pantyhose. There isn’t a moment when you aren’t aware of it, it’s constricting, scratchy texture like a second skin. From the moment you arrived, a six-year-old immigrant from China, blinking and bewildered after your first solo flight to meet parents you hadn’t seen in years, this new membrane has clung to you, whispering of a desire that colors all the memories of your childhood: I wish I belonged.
At first it was the language. Before, in Shanghai, you were the neighborhood ringleader, rallying the cousins and neighbors from the nearby long tang’s into new iterations of misadventure. There are grainy home videos of you breathless with laughter as you tumble out the door yelling at the other children. Tian bu pa…
