Stories of Encounter, Choice, and Identity
Stan Lou
My personal history indicates that I’ve not always been so wise in my choices when reacting to some of my encounters. I may have improved on this as I became older, but it was definitely not too good early in my life. Invariably, if I came to an unfamiliar fork in the road, I’d take the wrong turn.
I recall now an encounter as a little boy growing up in my birth town in Mississippi. I was around twelve years old. I believed myself to be an average kid and felt relatively content with my life. Then one day a group of kids taunted me with ugly racial slurs, alluding to my Chinese ethnicity. This started happening often, as they waited for me everyday as I walked home from school. I couldn’t figure it out. I didn’t like it. I was intimidated, and I was frightened. Why was this happening to me? I thought I was a “good boy” who never made any trouble. But I didn’t think there was anyone with whom I could talk about this and get advice. My family had become dysfunctional with the deaths of my father and my sister. Besides, my mother was too busy trying to make a living for four kids and still in mourning.
So I tried to work this out by myself, and I decided that this was because I was different from the other kids. It was because I was Chinese. But whose fault was that? Certainly, it wasn’t mine! I concluded that it was my mother’s fault, and also all the other Chinese people who shamelessly spoke Chinese in public. So what could I do about that? I decided that I had to become one them, the “elite class” of people who were better than the non-white people. I had to act like them, dress like them, think like them, and have their values. So, I became a “red-neck,” full of intolerance, prejudice, and disdain for people who were different. In Mississippi at that time, that meant the African Americans. Besides that I had to give up my identity as a Chinese, at least in public. I had to deny the heritage of my parents and ancestors. I quit speaking in that foreign Chinese language.
So I was spending a lot of my early years trying to remake myself into someone else. I began to realize that this wasn’t making me happy at all; but how else could I survive in this society? I finally decided that I would have to go off to a different environment to see if life could be better for me. I went as far away as I could to attend college and found a more friendly environment. Through lots of prayer and interaction with classmates and colleagues at work, I found out that my attitudes of intolerance, prejudice, and hatred were not acceptable. I believe I have purged those attitudes from my system, although I know that I fall short many times.
The other part of my choices has been much more problematic for me, i.e., determining my real self-identity. I had made some profound decisions about my ethnicity that seemed to have scarred me indelibly. I was thinking of myself as a pure American. I was born in this country and lived my whole life here. I not only didn’t speak a foreign language in public, but I didn’t even speak with a stereotypical foreign accent, only with a distinctive southern drawl! However, to me it seemed that all of America perceived me, at best, as a perpetual foreigner, and at worse, a Yellow Peril. Many times in innocuous situations, I am picked out by some nice person and asked, “Where are you from?” When I answer, “Mississippi” or “Texas,” he or she goes on with, “Where are you really from?” Those types of incidents of probably innocent ignorance nevertheless always made me realize that I’m not a “pure American.” My attempts to recreate myself into an “American” were not working. So what am I? And notwithstanding the color of my skin, I didn’t think I was Chinese any longer, at least figuratively. After all, I had trashed that identity. Clearly I needed to concentrate on somehow clearing up that terrible decision.
For much of my life, I decided to just live with this dilemma, thinking that somehow this would work itself out, that it would all go away. After all, many other people in my type of situation seemed to be happy with themselves. Although my life has been good, I never felt any peace of mind over this issue. It always nagged me that my identity was in limbo, and deep down I didn’t really like myself. I suppose that this was a root problem in many of my personal relationships. Fortunately for me, I feel that God led me to confront this by having meaningful relationships in my professional and social life and finally leading me to live and work in China for an extended period of time to come face to face with my ethnicity. There I learned more of who I was from the proud heritage of my parents and ancestors and came to realize that I am Chinese and proud of it. I blended in very well and felt that I was “home.” But alas, living there could not bring me peace of mind either. Because of my Western attitudes, I stood out as an “overseas Chinese.” Although I was certainly treated kindly and tolerantly, I was treated differently, not totally unlike in America.
So I decided to come back to America knowing this is where I need to continue my search for my self-identity. Who am I? I’m not fully Chinese, and I’m not fully American. I am truly a hyphenated person, i.e., a Chinese (or Asian), hyphen, American. I think that I have accepted that. Now I’m trying to learn how to live my life as an Asian-American with deep involvement in the AA community and closer ties with my family, while continuing my normal so-called American life.
It has been and continues to be a difficult journey to finding that final peace of mind for myself about my self-identity. I’ll continue on through prayer, work, and study and through my family, friends, and community. Certainly, I’d be thankful for your prayers.
