“An-an!”
I ducked and looked around to make sure no one had heard my mother shout my embarrassing Mandarin name.
“Don’t call me that in public,” I told her, opening the door to our red mini-van.
I didn’t like my culture, not because of the culture itself, but because of the way people react to it. Even though there was nothing wrong with my background, I felt hindered because of it.
As a child, I attended a majority white-Jewish school.In the third grade, we spent one week learning about silk worms. Reading the TIME for Kids article, my teacher announced to the class that in some parts of Asia, people ate these worms. I will never forget the burn that arose inside my body when all eyes of the class shifted in disgust at me. I didn’t eat worms. I was just as American as the rest of them; at least I wanted to be.
I later attended a very diverse middle school. It was strange for me to meet people who liked me for my personality, rather than turn away from me for my physical appearance. I had friends of all backgrounds who happily accepted me. They understood my culture, even lived in it. I had soon forgotten the misery of being the odd one out, the person nobody understood. I finally felt normal.
Little did I know that I wasn’t necessarily the only “odd one out.” Being privileged enough to attend a diverse institution like the University of Maryland, I found myself joining the Asian American Student Union. Here, I met many students who had similar experiences when they were pre-teens and teens. With our passions combined, we generated the drive to activate the community about APA issues.
Through the FUEL Leadership Conference, listening to many keynote speakers, and attending events throughout Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, I grow more proud of my Asian background every day. While I’ve seen the AASU do a great deal to bring all the APA Coalition organizations together, there still lies a discord between South Asian organizations and other APA organizations. I later discovered that some South Asians didn’t even consider themselves to be “Asian.”
I hope that through further acts of advocacy, we can bridge the gap between the two communities. If the minorities stand broken, we cannot reach our potential volume when we voice ourselves to the larger community. While every member of the APA community is unique, we all know how it feels to be oppressed, to be the one kid everyone stares at in class, and we all wish for something to be done about it.
Elaine Wang is a computer science and information systems major. She serves as the Asian American Student Union vice president of programming.
