One of the hardest things we had to do when we first arrived in Arizona was to give away our family dog, Penny. My uncle didn’t want our family dog inside or outside his house. If the shelter couldn’t find an owner, they would put her down. Mom gave the shelter extra money to keep Penny much longer than normal. The thought of Penny not being adopted was a possibility we quickly dismissed from our minds.
I found it difficult letting her go. She was a member of our dream team from Maryland. She felt like the last symbol of Maryland that we carried to remind us of where we’d come from. Saying good-bye to Penny made the transition we were making from Maryland to Arizona more final. From a colorful, imaginary world with fantastical creatures to the eye-popping reality of the barren desert. This East Coast–to–West Coast shift was more than geographical.
Soon after we arrived in Arizona, we noticed people staring at us. People just gawked at us like we were exotic animals in a zoo. Stunned expressions. Impulsively, children and even adults squinting or slanting their eyes with their index fingers to try to depict their portrayal of me and my family. They would look at each other and just laugh after trying to mimic our eyes. I soon realized this was the first time many of them had seen an Asian person up close. Some people derisively pointed at us. If some were too timid to make fun of us, we still could see their whispering lips and long stares as we passed them by. I hadn’t experienced this in Maryland.
Years later, a group of Asian friends and I walked into a crowded McDonald’s restaurant and even then, everyone became quiet. They all looked at us like we had just arrived from Mars. Then a small boy pointed at us, and yelled amid the silence: “LOOK, MOM!”
At the start of fourth grade at a local elementary school, my new classmates peppered me with questions.
“Are you Chinese?” was the first question I always got from kids and parents alike.
If you were Asian when I was growing up, people just assumed you were Chinese. Many people didn’t know about Korea.
“No, I’m actually Korean,” I answered.
“Where are you from?”
“I’m from Maryland. But if you’re asking where I was born—
Seoul, Korea, on a US military base.”
These were the friendly questions. But the questions soon escalated and turned into more aggressive demeaning attacks: “Chink!” or “Chinaman!” “Go back to your country!” Initially, I tried to avoid the taunts. But after relentless shaming, which was common growing up, it was tough not to respond, especially as I got older.
“I’m not Chinese, bro.”
“Well, then, what are you?”
“I’m Korean.”
“Okay, you’re a Kink!”
As kids laughed, sometimes I tried to laugh, too, acting like this didn’t bother me. I didn’t want to give anyone the pleasure of thinking their words impacted me negatively. Usually, I just walked away feeling embarrassed and like a freak. They kept making slant eye gestures. At recess and on the bus, in the classroom or in the playground, the ridicule didn’t stop, especially as it related to the shape of my eyes. Some were innocuous and innocently curious. Others were more brutal with their incessant racist remarks.
“Hey, can you see through those eyes?” they asked as they tried to physically exaggerate the shape of my eyes on their faces.
“Why is your face so flat?”
“Ahhhh-so. Is that what they say in China to each other?”
“Do you know karate?”
As time went on, the words became more piercing as they tried to mimic a stereotypical Asian immigrant’s accent with their voices:
“Hey, Chinaman!”
“You’re a chink.”
“Gook!”
“Ching Chong!”
This last one had my sister’s name embedded in the slur.
The ridicule felt relentless. The worst part was not just hearing the slurs, but knowing what people actually thought even if they weren’t saying it out loud. You could see it in their eyes. The eyes didn’t lie.
It seemed that wherever I went, I was some sort of misfit, the main character of the freak show. I had a running inner dialogue trying to encourage myself.
My eyes aren’t shaped upward. Small—yes. Different from everyone around me in Arizona. But they are not slanted eyes. You got this.
Yet, when I was alone, I started pressing the outside edge of my eyes downward to make sure my eyes wouldn’t grow upward as I got older. I was hoping I could change the shape of my eyes and stop kids from making me the brunt of their jokes.
For the first time in my life, I began to think that something was inherently wrong with me. That I was less than the white kids I saw around me. Before coming to Arizona, I never even thought about how I physically looked. I don’t ever remember being teased. My friendships were all positive. But for the first time, I started thinking about the contours of my eyes and how different I was. And not only different, but what others perceived as ugly or unattractive.
Instead of being awed by the beauty around me, I found myself—without even understanding it—anxious about my personal appearance and what others thought about me. What added to the shame was my portly frame at the time.
One day after I came home from school, I dropped my textbooks in the bedroom I shared with my brother and rushed to the bathroom two doors down the long hallway. All day long, I’d endured criticism about my looks at school, and then on the bus. By now I was highly sensitive to prolonged looks and whispers. I could feel people staring at me without even looking at them. Every time I heard someone laugh, I thought it was about me. The relentless teasing about my appearance had grown into an infinite loop of criticism in my mind.
Standing in front of the mirror, I grabbed the top of my T-shirt and lifted it above my head, tousling my straight black hair in every direction. Then I just stared at my fourth grade self in the mirror. My eyes went to my round midsection, where a couple rolls of fat had continued to grow since I was a baby. Those rolls that were cute on a one-year-old were now noticeably unattractive.
Oh, great. It’s not only my eyes. It’s my rolls!
How’d I get so plump?
For several moments, I stood there, transfixed. I grabbed my rolls and shook them.
God… why do I have to look this way? Why me? Why?
