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Follow Friday + Nicki’s Personal Updates: On Being Transcultural

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It’s no secret that I was adopted when I was four months old. I was born in East Asia. My dad is Italian-American. My mother is half-Italian, half a European mix of Czech and German and possibly some Dutch. (Speculation since the advent of Ancestry.com prevails from time to time.)

I recently met some new people. A few drinks in and the usual questioning starts.

“Where are you from?”
“Pittsburgh, I answer.”
“No, not that.” People get exasperated. “Like, where are you from?”

From now on, whenever someone asks me “where I’m from,” I’m going to say Pittsburgh. Or the United States, if I’m traveling internationally.

Whenever someone asks me “what I am,” I’m going to say that I’m a human being. As someone who was adopted into a mostly Italian-American family (and marrying into a largely Italian-American family in 65 days), I can tell you that wearing the shell of being Asian in this country is exhausting at times. Asian-Americans make up less than 4% of the country’s population, but they even like to segregate amongst themselves: “Oh, she’s Korean, this means she’s this or that. Oh, he’s Chinese, so he’s different from me this way or that way.”

On the one hand, I try to have compassion for people. I realize they’re not asking me the questions to be offensive. They’re sometimes just curious, or trying to make conversation. People often don’t even mean to stereotype on the basis of race; many times, it’s an oversimplified means to understand a person who looks or acts differently than they do. It can be hurtful, limiting, and ultimately destructive, and I try not to do it myself, but I get it. We live in a society where we are classified and sorted by data and associated stereotypes: Tall, short, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, single, married, this personality type or that socioeconomic level. I don’t have to like it to get it.

But if any of the questions are complex for you, as they are for me, you don’t have to answer. You can have the courage to check the “Other” box. There is room in the world for you to speak your own truth. And when it comes to my own race, stop asking me. Because you’re not getting an answer.

I am more than my apparent nationality, what I look like, and the country I was born in. I do not need to be classified by a race, an ethnicity, or a country. My words, my actions, and my character are classification enough. If you want to get to know me, get to know me for what I think, say, and do, not for where I was or was not born.

I am now an adult, it’s my life, and I’ve had enough. I’m a human being. Final answer.

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