(Lena Wong) When It Sizzles

My background is one of laksa and lasagna, Hawker food centers and hamburger stands. I’m a ray of California sunshine and a breath of humid Singaporean air. My citizenship lies not too far above the equator, but my permanent residency sits firmly in the Western Hemisphere. I might not be fresh off the proverbial boat, but my plane landed fourteen years ago and my identity has been complicated ever since.

Since the predominant language in Singapore is English or, rather, Singlish – a blend of British English, Hokkien, Cantonese, and Malay – my arrival in the United States was not greeted by a language barrier. My first day in kindergarten was, however, greeted by a feisty girl who grabbed me by the collar and called me stupid. Funny only because I was already spelling words while my peers pored over the letter “T”. This was my “Welcome to America”.

What proceeded in the years after my entrance to the American education system were years of struggling to attain the popularity so highly emphasized in teen films while still upholding the strong Asian values instilled in me by my parents. After all, as I was often reminded, the move to America was for my benefit: my parents wanted me to grow up in an education system that valued creativity and rhetoric instead of raw numbers and memorization.

But it wasn’t easy. All attempts at educating my peers about my Chinese background and Singaporean nationality dissipated once elementary school (and the show-and-tell sessions that came with it) ended. My ascension in the ranks of popularity in middle school led me into a group of girls who were predominantly Caucasian. And, although I grew up in the Bay Area, long regarded as a racial melting pot, my minority status within that clique made me particularly attuned to discussions about race -- so much, in fact, that the easiest option seemed to be complete disregard of my culture. I became what the Asian American not-so-affectionately calls a “banana” – yellow on the outside, white on the inside.

The statements that affected me varied in degree: One day, a girl lamented the fact that her father did not regard the high-brow Asian bistro P.F. Chang’s as a “real” Chinese restaurant despite the fact that she’d informed him that I, her one Asian friend, had said that it tasted good. On a more offensive level, I found myself in the backseat of my car with my best friend at the time when she pulled at the corners of her eyes and said, “Hey, now I look like you.” We were freshmen in high school. There were backhanded compliments – “You do your eye makeup really well for someone with such small eyes” – and direct put-downs – “I would have asked her out if she weren’t Asian,” but, all the same, these people were my so-called friends and the allure of popularity was too much to turn down.

My race began to seem unattractive, undesirable and, at the same time, undeniable. As much as I could wrinkle my nose at the pungent Chinese medicines in our closet or refuse to speak Cantonese at home, I couldn’t change the color of my skin. For better or for worse, I was an Asian growing up in America. That experience in itself isn’t too bad – especially in the areas of the United States that I’ve lived so far. What complicated things, however, were my family’s yearly trips to Singapore.

After the grueling, drawn-out process of attaining permanent residency in the United States, my mother and I made our first trip back to Singapore. My head was spinning with all-too-vivid memories of my youth and I simply could not wait to re-experience my home country after so many years away from it. Yet, my disembarkation from the plane was hardly what I expected. My grandmother, with whom I had had a close relationship when I was a toddler, constantly commented on my weight. I was of average size for an American teenager, but perfectly unacceptable by Asian standards. The images that had been floating in my head of places I’d seen as a child seemed outdated and, as much as I tried to reconnect with the country of my birth, it had grown away from me. Or, perhaps, I had grown away from it.

Although I had spent much of my adolescence waiting to return the place where I thought I truly belonged, I had arrived to find that it had forgotten me. The friends I had had as a child were virtually impossible to relocate, my former school had no record of my existence, and the adults who had helped raise me couldn’t stop fixating on how much I’d changed. Among their obsessions were my height, my weight, and my accent. In Chinese, they would comment on the “American” girl in their presence – the one who spoke English so quickly that it sounded like a machine gun, the one who resented the Chinese delicacies put before her, and the one who, they were certain, didn’t remember anything about Singapore. The place that I had so long considered as home suddenly seemed inexplicably foreign and I found myself wondering where I truly belonged. And, although that first return was almost a decade ago, that question is still one that I find myself pondering today.

Of course, with age came more confidence and comfort with the people around me. I eventually found solid groups of friends in high school and college with whom race was joked about but never singled out. The girl who thought that popularity only came with associations with certain people eventually grew up and focused on herself, rather than the opinions of those around her – she was even nominated to be homecoming queen when she was a senior. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that she – or, rather, I – have found myself a permanent identity. Now, as ever before, I find myself constantly in transit and constantly flitting from one identity to another. Upon meeting other Singaporeans (which happens more than one might think), I often preface all statements by telling them that despite my thick American accent, I am a citizen of Singapore and go back every year. And upon telling those in the United States about my lack of American citizenship, I often give them strung-out explanations for my choice to refrain from applying for a citizenship. The latter conversation also sometimes involves an explanation that I am not, and never was, an illegal immigrant.

So where do I belong? The truth is, I don’t really know. Maybe it’s the address on my driver’s license or the emblem on my passport. Perhaps my place is in Asia, America, or somewhere in between. Either way, I’m still trying to find it and I might be on this journey for most of my life. But, when I do happen upon that destination, I’ll be sure to send you the coordinates.