nwasianweekly.com
Sept. 30, 2006

Waking Up American: Coming of Age Biculturally, edited by Angela Jane Fountas. Published by Seal Press, 2005.

This collection of 21 essays, written by first-generation women reflecting on their multicultural American identity, is a gem of a book. I recommend it to those of us who “wake up American” as well as to anyone who has ever made someone else feel different by asking “What are you?” or insisting, “No (you’re not American), where are you really from?”

The book’s editor defines first generation as “covering two groups of people: immigrants and those whose parents are immigrants. This book expands on this definition to include women like me, for whom being first generation on one side of the family is an inextricable part of their identity.”

The writers included in this collection can trace their ancestors back to numerous countries, including China, the Philippines, Germany, Nigeria, Vietnam, Haiti, India, Iran, Japan, Pakistan and Panama.

While reading each essay, I was transported back to my own experiences of growing up in America as an immigrant from Hong Kong.

In her essay “(Un) American,” Patricia Justine Tumang, a Filipino American student visiting Kenya, writes about her efforts to convince Kenyans that she is both Asian and American. Most respond by calling her Chinese or insisting that she must be Japanese. She explains, “Many Kenyans believe that all Americans are white. The limited American media that reaches the coastal region features TV shows that … promote the image of Americans as a homogenous racial group.”

In “The Art of Making Hot Tea,” Jenny R. Sadre-Orafai tells about her father’s visit to her first-grade class, dressed in his native Iranian clothing, bringing gaz (chewy Iranian candies) as he gave a talk about the Persian New Year, celebrated on the first day of spring. At first she is happy that he is such a hit, but she is also uncomfortable. Sadre-Orafai reveals, “I think what bothered me most was that my classmates’ gaping mouths and wide eyes told me that my father was different from theirs, something that had never occurred to me before.”

Fitting in — or not — is a common theme throughout the book. Melissa Secola in “Kimiko” writes about a college roommate’s boyfriend’s response to her explanation that she is “half Japanese, one-quarter Swedish, and one-quarter Norwegian … but I have an Italian last name.” After processing this answer, he replies emphatically, “You’re a mutt!” Melissa laments, “There were people I had known for years who still called me Chinese. But I had never been called a dog.”

In the end, all the women have experienced being called something they’re not. Being American means many different things, and the essays in this warm collection richly reflect this complexity. In “The Hyphenated American: On Checking ‘Other’,” Monica Villavicencio observes, “The very structure of contemporary American society and the very definition of the American population invariably incorporate characteristics of race and culture. And so even if I tried to be just American, America doesn’t work that way.

May Leong can be reached at info@nwasianweekly.com.

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