Points of difference: 1988-2010

[oyceter]

For chomiji, who asked for "stories about your personal history and encountering and/or embracing a situation that occurred because of a point of difference" for her con_or_bust post.

1988

It's my last school year in the US, although I don't know it yet. My third grade teacher wants us to ask our parents where they are from. When she gets to me, she doesn't even bother asking, just says, "China, right?," and writes it on the poster on the wall, which hangs there for months as a reminder. I've never been to China, don't know anything about it except Forbidden City and panda bears. My parents are from Taiwan, my grandparents and relatives are in Taiwan, and I am ashamed for years to come that I never corrected her, that I lied, even through omission.

1990

The market is outdoors and stinky, and there are stalls with people chopping frogs in half, eels swimming in plastic tubs, bits of pink plastic string spinning around to keep the flies away from the meat. One of the kids tells me about school and cleaning competitions and getting red, yellow, or green certificates for good grades, certificates you can trade for books or prizes or snacks. "Books?" I ask. "In English?!"

1994

My sister, my friend, and I compile a list of Taiwan vs. the US. Taiwan, minuses: mosquitoes, heat, no toilet paper. US, minuses: no ceiling lights, TATs (typical American teenagers), cool people. Taiwan, pluses: fancy air conditioners, better speed bumps, roasted chestnuts. US, pluses: books, Chips Ahoy, carpet. We balance out the list, making sure the US has more minuses and Taiwan more pluses, including "ceiling lights, mangoes, typhoon days."

1999

The local anime rental store is run by my stereotype of a white geek guy: long hair, geeky t-shirt, glasses. There are tables of people playing Magic. Everyone there is white and male; heads turn when I walk in. The shelves are full of VHS tapes: Marmalade Boy and Neon Genesis Evangelion and Akira and Vampire Hunter D and Ninja Scroll and Tenshi Muyo, boys boys boys boys boys on the covers. The only manga is sized as USian graphic novel collections, and they are all flipped. There is no shoujo except a few issues of Sailor Moon, and I remember my comic book store at home, where half the shelves are the plain white spines and boring fonts of what I think are Tong Li's shoujo line, and the other half are the pastel green spines of Daran's Hua Mong Gwan (Hana to Yume) before it went under. I've only been reading manga for a year or two, but I already miss the sappy sweet high school shoujo and the gothic crack, and I could care less about the lone geek guy surrounded by hot alien babes or about giant robots, despite my love for Gundam Wing and Evangelion.

2000

There are a ton of Internet checklists floating around, and every time I see one about "Azns," I flinch. I don't know what rice rockets are, most of my friends from Taiwan don't have designer bags and clothes, and although I can tick off a few things from my childhood in the US, I'm more confused than anything. There is no mention of having to memorize endless amounts of classical poetry or Confucian analects, nothing of crowded streets and food stalls, of taking tissue packets with ads passed out on the streets, of convenience stores with more shelves of tea and juice than soda, of fireworks for New Year and televised dragon boat races. What I do recognize puzzles me as well, because even though I intellectually understand that not everyone has a rice cooker or takes their shoes off in the house, it's not something I've ever really experienced.

2001

I help my white roommate do her hair, the fluffy texture and softness completely different from my own. She tells me she was blonde-haired and blue-eyed as a baby; she has brown hair and green eyes now. I never knew things like eye and hair color could change from birth.

2003

I sign up for Livejournal to read about Buffy and depression, and instead, I find a wealth of book recommendations. Diana Wynne Jones I've never heard of, Patricia McKillip I know only because she was shelved by McKinley. People talk about Sondheim and Joanna Russ and Dorothy Dunnett, all unfamiliar. There are conversations about feminism that I can barely follow, and I'm afraid to comment because I don't get why people are so angry about "men get raped too" coming up in discussions of rape. I've found fandom before, but this is the first time there are so many people talking not only about my fandom loves, but about books and politics and depression and and and...

2005

I have a ("respectable," parental-approved) job and a boyfriend, but it feels like I'm just hanging on by the fingernails, have been for three years now. Things look good on the surface, but everything's falling apart, and I'm just the shattered pieces of who I used to be, barely held together with glue and spit and duct tape, bits coming off every time I move, every time I just breathe. Everyone else can do it, everyone else functions fine, everyone else has good reasons for being tired or not up to the task. It's just me who doesn't work properly, and it's all my fault, and everyone expects and wants me to be fixed and functional and it is too much.

2006

It's after the cultural appropriation panel at Wiscon, and I'm back online, trying to explain why I still feel uncomfortable. And suddenly, the space I'm most at home in, the space that got me through the years before, is a space that is angry about my not wanting to talk about white people. I never realized how much I had assumed that my readers were mainly white, how most of everyone and everything I read was white, how much I positioned myself for that world. There are other spaces online, ones I've never noticed before, with concepts and vocabulary and authors and so much history I never knew, so many things I overlooked and ignored my whole life. I'm not quite comfortable here or there, and I can't tell how much of my discomfort is unfamiliarity with new spaces, how much is social awkwardness, how much is my own baggage of privilege and white norms and colonized thinking. I know how to be different in the US with white people, I know the boundaries and the negotiations, the prices to pay and the not-privilege of being "not one of those Asians." I don't know what to do or what to say outside this space, I'm afraid becoming even more different will cost that bit of space I've finally carved out for myself among a conservative upbringing in Taiwan, a miserable college experience, and geekery and feminism and genre and fandom.

2010

This is not 2011, because this is not an ending. I am posting more in Mandarin, with bits in Japanese and Korean, because I know there are people who can read it, because I know there are people who can't but want me to have that space. And it comforts me to find bits of languages I don't know in posts across my dwircle, talk of experiences that are not mine, always learning more about the histories they don't teach us or tell us, the connections that fall to the side, the identities that are erased. Queer AND POC AND poly, non-USian AND disabled AND female, transgendered AND lower class AND geeky, older AND kinky AND Muslim, the ANDs more important than the ORs mainstream discourse tells us we should be. AND AND AND...

Comments

[marina]

This is an amazing post. Thank you for writing and sharing it.

[phi]

<3 Beautiful post.

[littlebutfierce]

♥ ♥ ♥

[laurashapiro]

Thank you for sharing this with us. I love you. You're wonderful in so many ways.

And damn, you can WRITE.

[thistleingrey]

<3

[yeloson]

The spaces we fight for. Yes!

[willow]

**offers squish**

[kore]

A beautiful post.

[troisroyaumes]

<3 So much love for this post!

[m_pig]

This post made me cry, thank you.

[chomiji]

Thank you very, very much for all these glimpses of your life. This is much more than I ever expected. And your writing, as always, is so vivid and effective.

(And reading about your early LiveJournal experiences reminds me that in many ways, you, kate_nepveu, and coffeeandink were the people who first made me aware that LJ existed, because you were all writing up books that I liked.)

[oyceter]

Thanks so much for your support of CoB and for the prompt! It's funny how a lot of these moments were ones I knew about, but hadn't thought of together...

(also yay! LJ = BOOKSES for me)

[trinker]

Ooh.Thank you.

[jinian]

You are so great.

[heresluck]

I knew about or had inferred a few of these moments already, but many of them were new, and seeing them all together like this is amazing. Thank you.

[coffeeandink]

One of the kids tells me about school and cleaning competitions and getting red, yellow, or green certificates for good grades, certificates you can trade for books or prizes or snacks.

You got BOOKS for good grades?!?! *is full of envy*

[oracne]

This is a great post, not just because of the content, but because of the wonderful style with which you wrote about it.

[sanguinity]

:: There are other spaces online, ones I've never noticed before, with concepts and vocabulary and authors and so much history I never knew, so many things I overlooked and ignored my whole life. I'm not quite comfortable here or there, and I can't tell how much of my discomfort is unfamiliarity with new spaces, how much is social awkwardness, how much is my own baggage of privilege and white norms and colonized thinking. ...I'm afraid becoming even more different will cost that bit of space I've finally carved out for myself... :

:: This is not 2011, because this is not an ending. ::

:: AND AND AND... ::


You are one of the people I give thanks for.

[oddcellist]

This is an amazing post; thank you so much for sharing it with us.

[jadelennox]

Thank you for this.

[bravecows]

I recognise so many things here! :D Like the eye and hair colour thing. And this:

My sister, my friend, and I compile a list of Taiwan vs. the US. Taiwan, minuses: mosquitoes, heat, no toilet paper. US, minuses: no ceiling lights, TATs (typical American teenagers), cool people. Taiwan, pluses: fancy air conditioners, better speed bumps, roasted chestnuts. US, pluses: books, Chips Ahoy, carpet. We balance out the list, making sure the US has more minuses and Taiwan more pluses, including "ceiling lights, mangoes, typhoon days."

is such good writing. So vivid and funny. It makes me feel both happy and sad.

<3

[lady_ganesh]

I've had this open for days, just going back and rereading it. I still don't know what to say beyond thank you.

[wcynic]

Amazing and very thoughtful post. It's been over 20 years since my family immigrated to Canada and I still find myself making those lists of pluses and minuses.