1. Denial
It wasn’t that the idea of being biracial frustrated me, it was just that I didn’t think I was it.
Yes, I finally learned to write “Jaya Saxena,” but to a blank-slate of a five-year-old that combination of letters was just as random as any of my friends’ names. “Judith” looked weird too, right? “Denisa”? “Fiona”? I figured it was all arbitrary.
My family did not act like other immigrant or biracial families. Those kids had parents who spoke of siblings and childhoods in foreign countries with thick accents. They always seemed to be returning to those countries, or filling their households with decorations and music to make it feel like they had never left. They had kids who actually knew something about a “home country.” My house never felt like Talia’s house, where she’d switch between speaking to her dad in Hebrew, her mom in English, and then playing Aladdin on Sega Genesis with me.
My dad, who moved to Newark when he was 8, had long ago adopted a Jersey accent and demeanor, his actions indistinguishable from those of his Italian and Jewish neighbors. He cooked pork chops and pasta with meat sauce, and played country fiddle. He lit incense sometimes but so did lots of hippie parents. He hadn’t been back to India since before I was born.
My mom, with her freckles and red hair, was often mistaken for my Irish nanny. We can trace our first ancestor’s arrival to 1635, and by about 1740 everyone on her side had officially come over. She grew up on a farm and wasn’t afraid of killing the roaches that sometimes skittered around our apartment, and the only time she was called “exotic” was when she went to Scotland. Together, they were just my parents.
So I wasn’t biracial. I was a New Yorker, as if being both weren’t an option. I ate bagels and played handball and wore pants. My dad taught me how to play guitar and played me songs by Danny Kaye or The Muppets. Yes, sometimes my “dress up” outfits contained brightly colored silk and bangles, but those were just decorations. Yes, my grandma would make potatoes that came out yellow and were flecked with seeds, but she’d save a plate of spaghetti and slices of American cheese for me. They were Indian, not me, and that was normal.
2. Realization
When I was eight I sat crying on the stairs of my dad’s parents house. It was steamy and smelled like cumin, and Indian pop music that sounded like they got the same high-pitched woman to sing every song scratched out of the radio. The week before, I visited my mom’s parents at their farm, which was always like something out of a fable. I rode horses, groomed them, fed them hay. I made red currant jelly with my grandma and roasted marshmallows in their fireplace while my grandpa blasted Benny Goodman and quizzed my mom on the band members. Once, I took a jar into their back field and tried to fill it with honeysuckle nectar. I mean, you can’t get any more cloyingly picturesque than that. I have never read Anne of Green Gables and yet I assume there are at least two chapters devoted to that activity. Anyway, that week, I had been admiring the objects they displayed on their mantle, including an old print block of the letter J. “J, like Jaya,” I said. “Yes, J for Jaya, and J for Johnson,” said my grandma.
My dad’s parents were nothing like that. Despite being here for over 30 years at that point, I had a hard time understanding their accents. At night we would watch the news and my grandma would massage mustard oil into my grandpa’s scalp, as they spoke to each other in a language I couldn’t decipher. They were short with waiters. On holidays my grandma would make a flour paste and paint ornate decorations on the patio in front of the house, but I never learned what they meant. On that visit we most likely went to Pizza Hut, because we always ate pizza when I was there, though I was starting to get the impression that it was only for me.
And yet here was this name — Jaya Saxena. By that point I knew it was different, from all the questions about it meaning Mother Earth (“like the lady in Captain Planet?”), or the times I would say it aloud and it would come back spelled “Gia.” Any diversity celebrations at school would end in me bringing samosas, even though I never ate them, or wearing a sari, which I had to get my mom to attempt to wrap. None of the other kids had to deal with that. Carlos brought in empanadas and knew what they were. Everyone knew how to spell Molly’s name. No one expected Kelly to know how to speak Gaelic.
So I cried as I put on my shoes, ready to walk to catch the bus back into the city. “What’s the matter?” my dad asked. I sobbed, “I’m not a Johnson.”
3. Appropriation?
In 1995 I was obsessed with Gwen Stefani. All 4th graders were. But I had a special connection that no one else could claim — I could wear that bindi Gwen was wearing. I mean, if I couldn’t actually feel like the Indian I was told I was, I could at least fake it, right?
This coincided with more and more people expecting me to know more and more about “my culture.” So I gave them the schpiel about the bindi, or some line about Ganesh and offerings. I smiled politely when my friends or family grabbed my hair, taking my ponytail between their thumb and forefinger and laughing at the circumference in comparison to their own. “It’s just the Indian side!” I’d laugh. I brought my friends to my Indian grandparents’ house and had my grandma make them poori bread with hot milk and sugar, to this day the only Indian dessert I can stand. I knew I was not Indian, but I knew I was supposed to be.
Something about this felt wrong. I don’t necessarily look Indian. I’m often mistaken for something vaguely “ethnic” (a recent example: “I know you’re Jewish, but I’m getting a real Dominican vibe from you”), but no one has ever guessed that I was part Indian on the first try. If I walk down the street sporting a bindi and bangles, I do not look like the poster child of the modern Indian-American. I look like someone appropriating Indian culture. Interpret this as you will. Maybe I should have been more aware of my privilege. Maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to judge others if they don’t fit a profile we have in our heads. It didn’t make my identity any less of a mystery to me.
4. Shame
My first moment of real understanding that Indian culture was not my culture should have been my first trip to India. I was 13, and it was my first trip out of the country, a monthlong tour of the subcontinent with just my grandparents. There was embarrassment, sure. A relative picked us up when we landed, and I went for a handshake instead of the traditional touch-your-elder’s-feet-then-
I continued showing off my Indian jewelry and making grand, historic claims about Hinduism as if the culture were my own. I think it even got worse after the trip, given that now I had been to the “homeland” and convinced my friends I could speak with even more authority. But that summer I went to a new camp, and met a girl whose father was vaguely Buddhist and who named his baby son Jai, the male version of my name. She was so excited to find me, and insisted that after camp she would bring her dad into New York and we’d all go get Indian food.
I assumed this wouldn’t happen, but a few months later I found myself in one of the basement Indian restaurants on 6th Street, trying to make recommendations off the menu. The restaurant was one I chose, at random, but asserted was the best. I knew samosas, and naan, but the curries all seemed the same to me. My friend, airy blonde curls popping out of her ponytail, said I would definitely know what was best. I looked up at her dad, who leaned down to me and whispered “try the korma, I think you’d like it.” The jig was up.
Over the next year, I attempted to clean my act up, mainly by ignoring the very idea of heritage. I was a teenager after all, and was far more interested in listening to my Walkman in the hallways and hoping my classmates didn’t notice I existed. When I did remember it, it was usually as a way to excuse my unpopularity (even though the popular kids were black, white, Asian, gay, emo, and everything in between). This is it, this is the actual struggle, I thought. And then it was September 11, 2001.
Compared to most New Yorkers my experience was pretty tame. I was let out of English class early, and saw the smoke rising over 3rd Avenue when my mom came to pick me up. I went to my uncle’s house, where my dad met up with me and we walked home together.
In the following days I noticed my dad sporting a Yankees cap I had never seen him wear before, and a small American flag pin. A sticker of an American flag showed up on our apartment door. He never acknowledged it, but I guessed it came out of a mixed place of pride in our country and fear that he had to show that pride or else. My skin was not dark enough to be questioned. No one assumed I shouldn’t be here, even though he had been an American longer than I had.
5. Anger/Rejection
Ok, so it was unfair of me to randomly incorporate Indian things into my life without learning anything about the culture or my family, and unfair of me to assume I knew what it was like to experience the actual hardships of being a minority. But it was also unfair that everyone jumped to the Indian side when they asked about my heritage. There was a whole other side of the family, too; a side that celebrated Christmas around a fireplace and had Easter egg hunts at their farm, the warmest, happiest place I’ve ever known. I was determined to show that this side could be as interesting as India, and was as much a part of my identity. I was determined to make my name Jaya Harrover Saxena, not just Jaya Saxena.
In some ways, I was successful in my research. One ancestor was a regicide to King Charles I. Others founded towns like Farmington, CT and Warner, OH. The original Harrover was an indentured servant sent over from the Shetland Islands. I found minor evidence for witches in my bloodline and nearly started screaming with joy. I believe I am eligible for both the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Daughters of the Confederacy, though I’m not sure the latter would want me, given that ultimately I am a half-Indian northerner who is marrying a Jew.
It was all quite fascinating to me, and I clung to it, waving it around whenever anyone had the audacity to call me “exotic,” or ask me how it felt to be a child of two cultures. There was nothing wrong with being biracial, I told myself, but the word still doesn’t describe me. I am not a child of two cultures–I am a child of one with a name from another. I felt as distant from India as if you had me pick a country from out of a hat and told me to embody the culture. I felt as connected to it as I did to Sweden or Tunisia. Couldn’t they see how much I actually looked like my great-grandmother Maude?
When no one accepted the identity I was trying to put forth, what I argued was my “real” identity, the anger started to bubble up. I snapped at my fiance’s grandpa (an old Jew from the Bronx) when he tried to tell me what a “nosh” was. “I know, I’m from New York!” I almost screamed, wanting to explain how my dad regularly uses “schlep” and “oy” and “schmuck” in everyday conversation. I jumped up and down when I saw the Aziz Ansari bit about being asked about Slumdog Millionaire, because for a good six months that’s all anyone asked me when they found out I was half-Indian. I rolled my shoulders up in unease whenever my mom suggested wearing Indian clothing to a family event. “But this isn’t what I’d normally wear,” I’d insist. “It feels like playing dress up.” I’d be reminded that it wasn’t dress up, because my name was Jaya Saxena.
6. Acceptance, Basically
This piece should end with complete acceptance, but it doesn’t.
In between the anger and the confusion, I learned how to make shrimp curry from my mom. Yes, the white one. One Thanksgiving I shelled 20 pounds of shrimp to make the dish for the whole family, and to this day all our dish towels are stained with turmeric. A few years later, I returned to India. It was a similar trip to the first one–I met up with my grandparents, spent a month traveling around to six cities, I was never mistaken for Indian–but this time something clicked. The country began to make sense. My family’s habits began to make sense. I couldn’t stop eating.
I started remembering all these “Indian” things about my life that I love. I love my dad and my grandma, wrapping saris for my friends, making halwa for breakfast on the weekends. I love reading Hindu texts, and brainstorming about the re-telling of the Durga myth that I’m going to write any day now. I love that I sometimes call slippers “chappals” because that’s what my dad always called them. I love wearing a salwar kameez around the house because there is nothing more comfy than pajamas made of silk. But every once in a while, I recognize that I am able to focus my love and ignore the parts of my culture that others can’t ignore.
I wrote that these were stages but if I look hard enough, or sometimes not hard at all, they’re all still there. I still get mad at people who make assumptions about my dominant identity, and I’m conflicted over marking “other” on questionnaires about my race. I’ll flat-out forget what people are talking about when they say they’re surprised my dad doesn’t have an accent. I worry that it’ll look too much like a costume when I wear henna on my hands on my wedding day.
Last weekend, I was talking about my ideas for this essay with a Polish woman who moved to America as a young child. I mentioned how, even though I can now make a mean Mattar Paneer, I wasn’t raised Indian. “But your parents gave you an Indian name,” she said, confused. If I were in a bad mood, I would have argued that my name has nothing to do with my life experiences (and grumbled later to my fiance about how annoying it is to be told I’m something I’m not). If I were in a great mood, I would have smiled and warmly thought about all the people in my lineage, witches and non-witches, Indian and everything else, that had to meet for a Jaya Harrover Saxena to even exist. I think I’m in a pretty good mood these days.
Images by Matt Lubchansky, who makes comics and occasionally leaves his apartment in New York. His work includes Please Listen to Me and New Amsterdam Mystery Company. He’s on Twitter, and doesn’t expect you to get his name right.
Tags: anne of green gables pretty much is about filling jars with nectar, biracial identity, daughters of the american revolution, gwen stefani, india, jaya saxena, matt lubchansky, minor evidence for witches, new york, the shpiel about the bindi, Walkman
Oh, as a half-Asian dude who looks of indeterminate ethnicity, I totally empathize. Awesome piece.
Gonna be real honest, was not expecting such a thoughtful, complimentary comment from a dude with that username.
Making assumptions makes an ass out of you and some guy’s flaccid penis.
this is such a lovely running theme of comment response, mallory. I would change my username, but I think Zuckerberg has to fire Joe Green first.
omg I thought this was about John Green, who wrote The Fault In Our Stars, and who I apparently mix up with Joe Green a lot
This speaks to so much of my experience as a bi-racial individual. In elementary school I never realized people read me as “other” until a girl who was adopted from S. Korea started going to my school and people lumped us together. Never mind that neither of us really knew anything about East Asia, or that I was half Taiwanese and she was Korean. I still don’t know how to interact with my Taiwanese grandparents and their expectations that I clearly don’t fulfill.
Right now, all I want to be is American. Sometimes I want to know more about my mother’s heritage. Usually I’m confused.
Jaya – this was great. Very interesting – something for us to remember when we make assumptions based on names or appearances.
Yes, this was great! Assumptions are the worst..
I have an “invisible” cultural background different from most people around me, but I don’t look like it on the surface, so it is always kind of amazing how people will not hear it, or forget, or say something to me about me to the contrary and I’ll have to remind them… people want so badly for you to “be” what you look like to them. People want their expectations to be true even when it starts veering into the absurd.
Awww man, I can relate to this a bit even though I’m not biracial–in our childhoods we only know what bits of culture our parents and family choose to share with us, even though everyone else doesn’t realize it. Even then it’s such a tiny slice of a larger cultural Whole, cut into pieces by the usual forces of class/gender/religion as well as personal inclinations. I think it’s hard for some Americans with more, uh, mainstream backgrounds, to get that.
I really related to the latter stages: when I tried to learn more about my heritage when I was older, it felt false to wrap around the bits of culture I learned from books, tv, and the Internet, but sometimes things stick, sometimes they don’t. I’m still navigating this today, almost 30 years later..
Also, it’s a funny coincidence to me that I’m reading this post after spending the weekend prepping and the first batch of cha gio/spring rolls that I’ve ever made on my own, independent of my mother. I’ve been thinking a lot about what kinds of traditions I’ll be sharing with my own future biracial children, and becoming comfortable with making my own stamp on them. One of the more unambigiously Vietnamese/Vietnamese American part of my childhood was cha gio at every family/viet social gathering, all the time, forever. I feel like I have to have my own recipe/style, but that’s because I love eating.
Also, a fun twist I learned in that post (and corroborated elsewhere): cha gio are traditionally made with rice paper, but Vietnamese Americans got either 1) tired of dealing with finicky rice paper and 2) had an easier time finding Chinese egg roll wrappers or Filipino lumpia wrappers in the 1970s-1990s in the US, and thus have been giving us/you all bastardized versions since then! haha, fuck you cultural purity. (I’m still going to try them with the rice paper though.)
I loved this. And while I’m not biracial, my father’s an immigrant and my last name has always been unusual for the parts of Canada I’ve lived in, so I can see a lot of echoes in my own life.
This was a lovely post with super cute illustrations! Thank you for sharing your experiences.
Whenever I think back on the time Gwen was sporting a bindi, I remember thinking: “Okay, Gwen Stefani is allowed to wear one and everyone thinks it’s cute and edgy. But the Indian girl in my neighborhood wears one and gets bullied for it?”
I didn’t get it at the time, but looking back, it’s the one example I use most often when talking about bindi appropriation.
aaaaaah jaya this was SO GOOD. And I love the illustrations.
(So many people assume I speak Spanish because I have a Hispanic last name. Sorry my Spanish-Cuban grandfather wanted to assimilate too hard and didn’t teach my dad!)
I’m not biracial, but I know the feeling of having people assume things about your name, since mine is pretty solidly Finnish, and Americans have no idea what to do with it. This was a beautiful piece. Thank you so much for sharing!
I can totally relate. I’m half Iranian, I look white (but with the Middle Eastern body hair, thanks dad), and people normally assume that Es is short for Esther (it isn’t) and that I’ve got some Italian or Spanish blood. One sister is a lot darker than me, the other is a lot paler.
One thing that I have really noticed, since 9/11 and again since the London bombings, is how many people think it’s OK to be racist round me. I am sure that 99% of them would never dream of saying those things if they knew I wasn’t straight-up English, but it’s always something of a slap in the face when I have to square up to some asshat and say ‘actually, you’re talking about me. Shut the fuck up.’
Ah yes, getting to be a fly on the wall with racism is so weird. For me, I hear about “those wetbacks” even from people in my family (the European side). I speak up with them, and they tell me it doesn’t apply to me because my family came here legally… like that’s supposed to make me OK with the term.
“No but Indians are really Caucasians”
WHY DOES THAT EVEN MATTER
Who would say this? I am picturing the dad from Mary Poppins (pre-kite-flying scene). Or that British Captain (Captain Phillip Blumburtt) from Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom.
No wait, I take it back, that Captain was a total racist.
And not to mention, even if I were white, it *still* wouldn’t be OK, and why the hell do they think other white people are also racist asshats?
Or the self-appropriated racism. “I’m Mexican so I can make that joke.”
ahhhhhhh yes nothing like casual racism to make you feel invisible!
Really interesting story, Jaya, and I like the illustrations, too. As a bi-racial person who looks white, I can’t overtly “blend” with people from my similar background (Portugese/Mexican). I was always asked to prove my background when I was a kid, “You don’t look Mexican,” “Is your MIDDLE name Spanish?” “Are you lost? This is the Latina/o Student Resources Center.” It got so annoying and tiresome that eventually I just had to create my own version of what biracial identity means. Not a huge struggle by any means, but one that puts your developing personal vs. public identity at odds at times.
As an adult I’m trying to embrace my portuguese heritage, and I really liked the way this talks about how you can feel somewhat false taking things that do belong to you, if you take them on as an adult. My dad’s side is mixed UK/French candian that landed in Maine more than 150 years ago so all their traditions feel to me innately New England- I’m good at wearing sweaters in the chilly house, apple picking, eating my apple pie with cheddar cheese.
But for all my anglo appearances and ways, there’s the other side that had ornate embroidered tablecloths, prominent rooster art (Galo de Barcelos) and puts garlic and hot pepper on everything. Made more complicated by the way they tried to smother a lot of it to mainstream. My mom and I are sort of culture detectives, discovering things piecemeal- she went to a Azorean festival and found out that the reason all the aunts had blue hydrangeas in the lawn is it’s a Azorean symbol. Turns out my grams cherry liquer and her biscuitos are some standard portuguese things, not just, stuff my grandma makes. I did a big dinner party of portuguese food and it was awesome, but yes, it does feel wierd to be like, guyz! I want to share my heritage that I just learned about with you!
You know, the funny thing about growing up with roots in other cultures is finding out just how much of your family memories is rooted in deeper cultural traditions and how much of it is just stuff your grandma/mom/sister does.
Such a lovely piece, Jaya. I’m going to forward it to friends of mine, she of English/Russian/Scottish descent and he a second-generation Indian-American-Canadian (his mom lives in Calgary). They live in Arizona and have two beautiful young kids in grade school, and this article may be relevant to their interests.
(Also, I came down here to say that basically, yes, AGG is all about collecting honeysuckle nectar, but Mallory and Nicole beat me to it.)
Wonderful piece. As a half Korean, half Eastern-European-turned-New-York Jew who doesn’t particularly identify with either side, the weirdest part for me is when total strangers (usually all well-intentioned) immediately assign me to their own ethnicity.
Shit, I’m a brown-haired white lady, and in my youth, dudes always asked me if I were something like their own background — “Hey girl, are you mixed/Puerto Rican/Italian/etc.?” No, no, and no.
Ha, totally. In those situations I can at least understand the motivation, however misguided. It’s so bizarre when people who don’t appear to have any ulterior motives declare things about my race though. I chalk it up to curiosity which is cool, but still. So weird.
People! SO weird.
Ah, this is so so so good! Thank you for writing, Jaya. I won’t say too much because I am monoracial and don’t have much to bring to the table, but this was so well-written and thoughtful.
I was really not expecting this to resonate with me as much as it did. I’m (kind of?) biracial, in that my grandfather was First Nations and my dad’s side of the family has always identified as such. The problem is, while my cousins and siblings look “ambiguously ethnic” I look very white. And my great-grandfather and great-grandmother completely assimilated before my grandfather was born so we have no language, or food, or much of the culture left, really. So I identified with both the feeling like you should be more connected with your culture as well as the feeling that people think you’re appropriating if you ever try to express your culture publically. Right now, I basically identify as white with some First Nations heritage and feel vaguely guilty about wearing my Joe Jack formline bracelet, but that’s caused some arguments with my siblings who identify as biracial and perform it much more openly. I recently got back from Latvia (my other grandfather’s homeland) and was really struck by how easy it is to identify as part Latvian. No one questions my “credentials”, even though I don’t speak Latvian, and I don’t feel guilty about wearing my aunt’s namejs ring in public.
This is really great. As a white dude married to a Japanese woman and who will have biracial kids (soon?) it’s honestly kind of scary knowing there’s this whole aspect of my future kids’ growing up that I will be largely ignorant about and won’t really know how to address in a non–bumbling white dude way.
Awww I’m sure you’ll be great! Just answer their questions and let them be who they are. And if anything, they’ll be half-bumbling-white-dude so you can totally relate.
Thanks for the encouragement! And yeah, if we get a call from school saying, “your daughter said something well-intentioned but still pretty offensive to another kid” then I’ll be like, “honey, I got this.”
I’m half-korean half-white. I can tell you that if you want your half-asian kids to grow up well you need to equip them with both worlds. Teach them both languages and do whatever it takes to instill self-confidence because if they get caught in the whirlpool of self-consciousness at the hands of other people (especially Asians and Whites) it will really, really hurt.
I’m a product of a similar mix, and hopefully it’s reassuring when I say that your kids probably won’t realize it’s unusual for a while. As a kid, I thought parents got together because they looked alike (mine both had dark hair and eyes) and I didn’t get why they found that hilarious until at least 8 or 9.
If you’re incredibly enthusiastic about teaching them about their heritage – great. If not (like my parents), don’t stress out about it. Encourage questions and support their curiosity, and look up answers together if you’re at a loss.
And because now I’m on a kick thinking about this stuff, two more cents: Pretty much the only parenting-related regret I have is that my mom didn’t speak to me in Korean. Since my dad didn’t speak it and there weren’t any other Korean kids in my school (except those adopted into white families), there wasn’t much pressure to learn. I tried in my late elementary/middle school years but by then it didn’t come naturally. It would have been a great skill personally and professionally to have later in life, not to mention super cool. I still have vague ideas about trying to learn, but it could have been effortless and I do wish I had that.
Oooh yes. When my dad moved to America it was much more about assimilation, so he only spoke English in the home, and no one taught me Hindi. Though this is tied up in my larger regret of being shitty at language and wishing I had learned ANY other language at a young age.
And on a totally practical note, I’m like, “Korea is a major international market now DO YOU KNOW how much more I could make if I was fluent?!” (I know this is partially on me, but still.)
I also lament not learning his native language from my dad. He was born in L.A. but only spoke Italian until he went to school. There he was so humiliated at not be able to speak English that he refused to speak thereafter until he could say it in English. He remembers nothing of Italian now. It breaks my heart a little.
Thanks for your comments! The language thing is definitely something we’ve thought a lot about. The plan is to make Japanese the language at home (my wife’s a native speaker and I can sort of speak it, though it’s an effort) but I know from friends that it can be difficult to sustain. I figure one advantage we have nowadays that previous generations didn’t is that we can do Skype/FaceTime convos with family back in Japan regularly.
Aw you guys will be great. Skyping is a brilliant idea, definitely wish that had been around when I was young.
GUYS! There are also bilingual kids books too for reading fun! I also wish they were available when I was a kid, since my conversational Vietnamese is terrible and my Viet literacy is nonexistent*.
*except for restaurant menus
Oooooh, good to know!
This holds doubly true for you and your wife–so many English speakers have tried learning Japanese! If there’s a Brown Bear, Brown Bear version in Vietnamese and English, I’d imagine you could find all sorts of both Japanese and English.
Same goes for Korean, Lish!
And if your kid gets hassled in kindergarten (not likely, but could happen), you can totally read them Rosemary Wells’ “Yoko Writes Her Name,” which is badass about (a) Japanese script and (b) standing up to bullies trying to make you feel like an outcast.
Yep, not being bilingual is a big regret for me. My family left Iran before the revolution when I was on the way, so both my sisters spent their childhoods there and speak Farsi fluently. They all talk about me when I’m in the room because I have no idea what they’re on about! Which at 35 I have made my peace with, but good lord it upset me as a child. It’s really worth making an effort to at least have the children vaguely conversant with both languages I think. My sister is raising her daughter with at least a bit of Farsi speaking.
I’m half chinese, half scottish, and though I feel I look quite clearly a mix I do get a lot of people asking and as I have never learnt any cantonese (my grandfather chose not to teach it to my mother) I do often feel like I can’t connect to that side of me well. Basically, I
I used to sip honeysuckle nectar all the time during my AGG phase. It was all I needed to convince myself that I was living that idyllic life. Now I read about your grandparents’ place and my childhood illusions are shattered and I’m jealous so THANKS for that.
So: now I know how to say ‘Jaya,’ I know my childhood was pedestrian, I know those illustrations are superb, and I know to tell my food-anxious kids to eat korma when we force them to go to the Indian restaurant with us. All this and a thoughtful essay, too.
Thanks for writing this, Jaya. I’m also mixed and have struggled with a lot of the same stuff – what’s appropriation? Am I denying my heritage if I ignore it because it doesn’t feel like it has anything to do with me? I get fewer questions, though, because my name matches what I “look like”.
This is so terrific. Thank you!
Wow, I didn’t read this expecting to identify with it. It wasn’t until I hit step 5, Anger/Rejection. I’m not biracial, but my dad is Jewish. I have a very Jewish first and last name and appearance, but no real cultural connection. I barely know my father’s family, and I wasn’t raised religious (except that after they divorced, my non-Jewish mother would make me light a menorah every year so I could be “in touch with my culture”). I vacillate between using it as a trump card (“I’m Jewish, so when I say zioinism is racist/the ultra orthodox are a cult/blah blah”) and getting mad when people don’t think I celebrate Christmas. One time I was talking about this and my friend’s (Jewish) dad told me it didn’t matter what I saw myself as, because Hitler would consider me a Jew and that’s what counts. Great.
Hitler thinks a lot of things…
Also half-Jewish, but on my mom’s side (so that makes me Jewish for real… I’m told). My mother was bullied for being Jewish when she was a kid (1950s-60s New York) and as a result she totally cut everything Jewish out of her life. I didn’t even understand that I could be considered Jewish until like high school becuase I was always told my grandmother was Jewish (she is also Canadian, and I figured “Welp, I’m not Jewish or Canadian, but my grandma is”).
I went through a period of feeling confused, and looked up the main tenants of Judaism as a teen so as to not feel like an idiot, but honestly don’t have any desire to pursue the culture. Whenever anyone asks (and some people do, cause I “look Jewish”) I just tell them I am Jewish ethnically, but not culturally or spiritually.
This is a lot of good thinking material. As a half-Arab who loves to make hummus and kibbee but comes from a fairly assimilated family, I’ve spent a lot of time going back and forth on the questions of how Arab I am, what it means to me, and what it has to do with the assumptions people make…
I love these comments from other ambiguously ethnic people! Much of my generation (cousins) doesn’t seem to put too much thought into our status as Arab-Americans, but it’s something I’ve always been confused about, especially since I (like a lot of you all, apparently!) am mostly seen as maybe vaguely “ethnic” but no one can quite tell why. I’m glad I’m not alone in being confused by all this…
I loved this, Jaya! Add me to the list of people who identify with these stages, ESPECIALLY the feeling of looking like I’ve appropriated someone else’s culture. I’m half Scots-Irish (also could qualify for the DAR, woop!), half-Mexican, and depending on the day, I guess I have an ethnically ambiguous look, based on the questions people ask (“Are you one-quarter Chinese?” is something I’ve been asked more than once). Really, I look pretty white, with an uncommon Spanish last name that I get asked about a lot. I grew up with my white family, with little contact with my Mexican family (who mostly cannot speak English) until I was an adult, and I don’t speak Spanish, so I sometimes feel like an impostor when I say that I’m half Mexican, but can’t claim much of the culture, as much as I would like to. I’ve taught myself how to make some bangin’ Mexican food on my own, and I love Dia de los Muertos customs and imagery, but I’ve definitely questioned whether it is ok for me to appropriate those things as my own too. Maybe as a reaction to my whiteness and the fact that even my mom would say I’m white (she’s mostly cooled it with the “Hispanics are white too” attitude, thankfully), I’ve tried to be forthcoming about being a halfie, partly to avoid the fly-on-the-wall racism I’ve been privy to, and partly because I feel like, why should that part of me be invisible? Why do my other half-white, half- Mex cousins get to go between the worlds so easily and I feel that I can’t or shouldn’t? Clearly, I’m still working it out for myself, but it was so good to read this, and to hear your and other commenters’ experiences too. Thank you for this.
Please don’t be so hard on yourself–I suspect, even though I don’t know them, that your cousins may not feel like they go between both communities as easily as they’d like to either.
This was so great. I’m mixed race and mixed culture, but they don’t correspond. I mostly appear ethnically ambiguous to strangers, but Asian shop owners will often ask me if I’m [insert their own Asian nationality here]. And I feel like I’m not allowed to be rude to them, because they’re just looking for a connection to their home, right? But also if white people did that my (internal) reaction would be, “fuck you, not your business, I don’t know you.” When I mentioned to someone I just met in college that I was studying Portuguese because my mom’s family is Brazilian, his response was “oh, is that why you look so weird?”
My dad is white/Canadian/essentially American, culturally. My mom was born in China, has Chinese genes, but her whole family grew up in/still lives in Brazil. I have almost zero exposure to anything Chinese. I have limited exposure to Brazilian culture. I know like, two words of Mandarin but can speak halting Portuguese (or… I could when I was in practice; maybe I can’t anymore?). But I totally don’t look Brazilian, because I have no black genes at all, and most of the Brazilian population has black and native blood. I am basically just a mutt American, the end. But my family tree and my outward appearance make me seem like I’m supposed to (“supposed” to) be *exotic* or *cultured* or whatever. Sorry I’m a bland disappointment, weird Americans obsessed with exoticism!
(Added weirdness/separation from cultural heritage: my parents and I lived in the US; all of mom’s family lived in Brazil, all of dad’s family lived in Canada. I grew up not really understanding this whole “my cousins are my friends”/”I know my aunts and uncles” thing, and I definitely didn’t have any grandparents around imparting their Old World wisdom to me.)
“Technically, Indian people (as well as Arabs, North Africans, Persians, etc.) are members of the Caucasian race. You can look it up! It probably is more correct to say that you grew up biculturally rather than biracially.” – Distant relative, to me, in a Facebook message after reading this piece.
Petition for a ‘daughters of the confederacy’ tag.
oh I love this thread! especially since it is helping me write a related paper that is due today.
people get very confused by both my appearance (vaguely brown and mixed-looking) and my family name (Chinese). my father’s family is mostly black Trinidadians. his grandfather immigrated from China to Trinidad, hence my name. my mom is white and American. my siblings and I all look identical, but are racially ambiguous-looking and identify in different ways. I’ve never been close with either side of my family, and have never even been to Trinidad. but I still automatically answer “Trinidadian” when strangers ask me what I am, because it’s true, and I’m not about to give every rando a rundown of my ethnic heritage.
having an unstable identity was a source of much confusion for me as a child, but eventually I accepted that my identity is fluid, and that many people’s are, and now I feel okay about it most of the time. I identify as black, biracial, mixed, and part of the diaspora (“halfrican” is a handy word I like to use to describe myself). I do, however, feel pretty strongly about having a child who is brown like me. my identity feels unstable enough, I suppose, that it’s like if any more white gets in my family line, the blackness might disappear entirely. (not saying this is right or even makes sense, it’s just what I can’t help feeling.) my sister, however, is partnered with a white guy and hopes to have his kids and instill a strong black identity into them anyway.
this is not something I think about a whole lot because I hate to make it seem like being mixed is the hardest thing in the world — it isn’t! — but it’s important to talk about, too. thank you for this, Jaya!
Oh god the ethnic heritage rundown. I hate that. Is it bad that sometimes I’m a dick and just intentionally confuse people?
-Where are your parents from?
New Jersey
-But where is your family from before that?
My grandpa was from Ohio, and his whole family is really English
-Really? Anywhere else?
My grandma is from Virginia and her family is mainly German with some French.
Basically I’m just trying to get them to admit that all they’re asking is “Why aren’t you white?”
yes, I do this sometimes too! gotta love the ambiguous “no, but where are you FROM?”
I sooo relate to the name part. I hated it growing up because everyone would ask about it and almost always mispronounce and misspell it (it doesn’t help that it has 8 letters). Sometimes people are nice about asking about it where it comes from, but some are really rude. I’ve had white and black people ask me why I have a black girl name because I’m very white. I used to be more offended by this question now I just give the questioner a fuck you look. I used to hate my name. Now I love it.
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.
I love identifying as Hispanic but it’s all a Lie, Lie, Lie and I don’t speak Spanish and I’ve never been to where my Dad is from and he’s not been back there for ages but I wear a map necklace of this random country of his around my neck and I’ve taken to pronouncing my last name with the rolled Rs but is it all because I can usually pass for white?? Am I just an appropriating liar? Or is it okay and not my fault they didn’t raise me bilingual and never took me to S.America?
Halfsie fears and woes…
Oh god the ethnic heritage rundown. I hate that. Is it bad that sometimes I'm a dick and just intentionally confuse people?
-Where are your parents from?
New Jersey
-But where is your family from before that?
My grandpa was from Ohio, and his whole family is really English
-Really? Anywhere else?
My grandma is from Virginia and her family is mainly German with some French.
Basically I'm just trying to get them to admit that all they're asking is "Why aren't you white?"
Technically, "Caucasian" is a made-up term by white people because they thought folks who we would now refer to as Bosnians were the most beautiful people in like the 1860s I wanna say? So they decided that all white people were "Caucasian" like Bosnians. That is my half-remembered understanding from A History of White People by Nell Irvin Palmer.
Ooh here's a paper by her, super fascinating http://www.yale.edu/glc/events/race/Painter.pdf. It's like even more racist phrenology, somehow.
White guy here, half dutch/half Italian with a Korean wife and a mixed son. He’s growing and I know this is something he’s going to face in his life that we can only do so much to prepare him for. We make sure we’re involved with both sides of the family, though it’s a bit harder sometimes since all her family is still back in Korea. Yeah, Skype is the greatest thing in the world for us and we always make sure every couple years we see each side of the family. But we speak Korean and English around the house, though I’m learning when he is it seems like. He can switch languages on the fly and we eat a big mix of foods, so hopefully, he’ll grow up knowing a bit about his heritage, though he’s pretty much just gonna get American from me, the foreign languages kind of died out with my grandparents.
This spoke so much to me and I know he’s going to face much of this, especially if we live in Korea at any point, but I hope that he’ll be able to answer back to either side whenever anything comes up.
Thank you for sharing something so important with us
I LOVED reading this and I feel like I can relate a bit. I’m half-white (German) and half-Hispanic (mostly Mexican, although some Native American and Spanish thrown in there). I look mostly white, although some people say that I’m “racially ambiguous.” I feel weird saying that I’m of Hispanic heritage when I don’t speak Spanish (my mom didn’t teach it to me) and my mom and her family aren’t immigrants – they’ve been in America for at least three generations. Still, though, my mom has brown skin and definitely looks Mexican. Can I say that I’m Hispanic when I “pass” for white and I don’t have the minority status attached to me when people look at me? Can I really relate to my Hispanic heritage at all besides eating homemade tamales and tortillas from my grandma? I don’t know. I feel guilty saying that I’m white and guilty saying I’m Hispanic. (Especially since I say “my mom is Mexican” and people say “When did she come over from Mexico? Um, never? She was born in Texas.)
Although feeling guilty is very Catholic of me, and I’ve got the religion in spades…
Being a halfie is definitely not the worst, but it comes with its own kind of confusion and questions!
You will always be a Johnson, one of us!
I grew up in white blonde-hair, blue-eye central. I'm half German and half Filipino Asian with my grandpa being hispanic. It doesn't matter if I hang out with whites, hispanics, or asians, no one knows what ethnicity I am. They'll say one such as are you hispanic, but if I hang out with the hispanics, they'll ask and assume I'm white. I fit in nowhere and am always treated and looked at as different.
I grew up as a white, with a white name, with interests in white guys, and feel totally foreign to my Filipino culture. My mom sounded like she spoke gibberish when she'd chat to relatives. I wish I could identify with that culture, but my Mom never made much effort for us to really know it to start with. "You're American," is what she'd say to me when I was growing up and questioning where I fit.
Hate not fitting in.
It wasn't until recently that I realized, being multi ethnic is an evolutionary trait. Instead of being ashamed of not being able to fully assimilate with one cultural background, we have the capability to adapt into multiple. This adaptation also offers a clear perspective of who we truly are..the only race that matters.. human.
Do you know any other biracial indians who embrace or are actively involved in Indian culture?
Oh, this made me feel so many feels…I’m half very-low-profile-and-rare-kind-of-Slav-with-even-more-low-profile-Turkic-ancestry, half Jewish of a mixed-but-dominated-by-self-hating-don’t-ask-don’t-tell-non-European-Sephardic type. I look generically pale and vaguely ethnic, though every once in a long while someone will see me as nonwhite, as happened to me a couple of times as an undergraduate on the Main Line, or once when I was trying to find an apartment in Toronto. I’ve been thought to be: Turkish, Bulgarian, Greek, Finnish, Russian, Polish, Tatar, “Central Asian,” Turkmen, Tajik, Tunisian, Italian, English, Lithuanian, First Nations, Metis, Azeri, Swedish, Iraqi, Roma, Chechen, Spanish, etc. Sometimes people think I’m an Eastern European prostitute or spy (this usually happens when I’m trying to re-enter the U.S. with my U.S. passport that states correctly that I was born in the U.S). People assume (if they know I’m Jewish) that I’m Ashkenazic, and I’m mostly not. Ashkenazic Jewish people often argue with me that I can’t be Sephardic because I’m pale and polite (so, hi racism! I relate to that fly-on-the-wall thing that others describe), and that because I’m Eastern European (from one side) and a Jew (from the other side), I should just identify as an Eastern European Jew, despite having a completely different heritage and cultural frames of reference and language(s). I know that I absolutely benefit from white privilege, despite not being completely white, but I sometimes envy people who look to others like the person they actually are, heritage-wise. And who have parents who were proud of their identity and passed it down without complications. It can be hard to pick through the shards of self-hatred and internalized racism for an identity you can live with.
Reading this I actually balled myself. My full name is James Kupu Vanisi Joseph, I am Tongan, New Zealand, and Lebanese. Being biracial can hurt but when it’s a colour thing it’s totally different. From my personal experience I can’t trust and the only real freinds I have is my family due to being the same blood and more relatable. My mom knows racism as she was often referred to in New Zealand growing up as a Nigga, and my father doesn’t talk about growing up in the early sixties in a all white Australian school as a wog. But to this day I can’t make real freinds due to exclusion of being halfy and often referred to as an Oreo. I have lost jobs over this and freinds which has shaped my sense of belonging and identity as insecure and being excluded. There are no other words racism still exists and it hurts more than anything I’ve endured. I can spend all night writing about my experiences and balling them out but I won’t be heard as I’m invisible………………
My Dad is from Pakistan, and this has happened to me too. Once I told the guy making racist, but-anyone-that-looks-like-that/is-from-there-obviously-hates-America comments that I was Muslim, and he didn't believe me.