Inspired by and in response to Connie Wang’s piece, “It’s Difficult For Asians To Quit Things Like Piano”, in Refinery29.
“When I hear the phrase “Asians are next in line to be white,” I replace the word “white” with “disappear.” Asians are next in line to disappear. We are reputed to be so accomplished, and so law-abiding, we will disappear into this country’s amnesiac fog. We will not be the power but become absorbed by power, not share the power of whites but be stooges to a white ideology that exploited our ancestors. This country insists that our racial identity is beside the point, that it has nothing to do with being bullied, or passed over for promotion, or cut off every time we talk. Our race has nothing to do with this country, even, which is why we’re often listed as “Other” in polls and why we’re hard to find in racial breakdowns on reported rape or workplace discrimination or domestic abuse. It’s like being ghosted, I suppose, where, deprived of all social cues, I have no relational gauge for my own behavior. I ransack my mind for what I could have done, could have said. I stop trusting what I see, what I hear. My ego is in free fall while my superego is boundless, railing that my existence is not enough, never enough, so I become compulsive in my efforts to do better, be better, blindly following this country’s gospel of self-interest, proving my individual worth by expanding my net worth, until I vanish.” — Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
I’m a quitter.
I’m 10 years old, in the backseat of my mom’s 2008 Volvo, beside me, my black quarter-size violin case. It was Saturday, and that meant we were on our way to my weekly lesson, at the Levine School of Music, a 15-minute drive from the house.
I parted my black hair again and frantically looked through last week’s notes, tapping my fingers to the notes of whatever piece I was trying to master at the time (Vivaldi Spring, Concerto №5, Musette).
It wasn’t always dreadful to be playing — but the choice was never mine, to begin with. My talent was our family honor, to this day, I hold my pencil like a bow. At age 7, I was so entrenched in the perfectionist musical culture that every time I would make a single mistake practicing at home, I would start over. This led to sobbing 6-hour sessions. My teacher at the time assigned me emotional exercises for when I made a mistake (one was drawing a bucket full of tears on my notes page, then crossing it out with a black marker). In seventh grade, I auditioned for the city-wide honors orchestra and was made concertmaster, which prompted a huge congratulatory celebration. But when I got the news, I just disassociated and thought about the next highest bar to reach.
I am far from alone in my experience as an Asian-American of participating in activities that are supposed to feel joy and passion, but instead trap one’s mind, body, and soul.
Yet why has it taken a hate crime era and a year of racial reckoning for me to realize how common my experience is?
Social media feeds this year are filled with “#StopAAPI Hate” and “#HateIsAVirus”. Long-lost contacts reached out, awkwardly apologizing to me for a racial microaggression they participated in years ago they remembered (I did not). Commercials from huge conglomerates from beauty to fashion to tech, featuring Asian models, actors, and artists. All-Asian musician and comedian lineups, with night event titles like “Solidarity with our Asian Brothers and Sisters”.
For so many of us, sharing our individual stories — assimilation, tradition, can be how we make sense of ourselves in a country with growing divides. A common theme of 2020 rang clear and true- “speak up, speak out, stop hate”. Articles spewed across the New York Times, Chinatown safety projects, social media campaigns, and protests reminded us what was happening. Scrolling through every post, “growing up Asian” narrative, and demand for justice across my feed, it felt like perfect timing. I felt satisfied with the piece I said online on the disserving box I and others felt placed in. My phenotype still granted me some shielding — I was taller, with creased eyes and freckles. I was met with fewer comments about how it was all affecting me, and commuted without excessive worry.
It is impossible to pin “Asia America” down to a single experience. Neither is it possible to have a one-and-done, comprehensive “conversation around what it means to be an Asian American” when according to the latest census, our population is 20 million and we come from 20 different countries. Blood quantum, generational numbers, and phenotypes can only get us so far. Varying levels of education, skill, and economic background stand out in one large group brazenly. So how can an Asian child, in an adoptive family, for example, begin to feel at one with the “American dream”?
But there is one conversation that I feel may be somewhat unifying, at least for most of us. For so long, I — and as I’m learning, many others — felt confined to compete in the highest bracket talent box of a hobby, interest, or career choice I wasn’t even sure I liked. This wasn’t just limited to childhood violin lessons — it also included sports, reading levels, writing contests, memorizations, etc. I was quite good at being competitive, and like many other immigrant parents with good intentions and money to do so, was lectured about the importance of college.
Yet as put by Connie Wang, “being piano-rich was not about acquiring financial wealth. We were striving for cultural wealth — something more valuable. A piano in a home isn’t just a sign that you can afford a piano, but that someone in your family is fluent in musical notation and, more impressive, Western culture.” What is “cultural wealth” in America for Asian Americans? Is it invitations to historically white spaces, wonder at our unbelievable splinter skills, ‘good’ school districts? Or is it just the absence of having to worry about any of those things?
I often think of how this intensity wormed its way into every aspect of my life- academics, sports, my mental health, and eventually, an eating disorder. Eating disorders thrive in secrecy and shame- and I was shrouded in both. But I wasn’t competing with anyone else- I was competing with myself, for my family, to feel accepted and seen and heard. No doubt that my family didn’t intend for it to feed into disordered eating — nevertheless, it’s how it went.
Intense competitiveness meant acceptance letters, scholarships, prizes, praise about my new body, being a concertmaster, or having a 3.8 GPA. It meant talking jargon like how to do the fifth position on the E string and playing for large audiences in shiny red dresses at beautiful city district buildings. Like Wang, I too was diagnosed with selective mutism that varied in intensity for a large portion of my childhood. Violin, being the captain of teams, clubs, and sports- were ways of somehow breaking my mutism, through the wordless talent that could be shown to panels of all-white judges, put on a CV. But when I got the chance to be alone and think about why I was truly doing it, I felt nothing.
I often think of a metaphor I used to describe depression when I was first diagnosed. Depression as in eating a burger and tasting nothing. I can’t help but think of every other creative or out-of-the-ordinary vocational first-generation Asian American, also tasting nothing in their higher maths and stagnant pre-med tracks and engineering programs. Stability and pride there, heart not.
In middle and high school, interests among my peers were buzzing and thriving — the fact that it was an alternative school only intensified it. There were drama kids with incredible self-written one-acts, musical kids, visual artists who would spend all night painting in the basement, pees of mine who loved tinkering with robots and equations. But as I passed every flyer on the wall about the next club meeting, I knew it was off-limits.
There were many emotions I felt, sadness, apathy, and anger. Anger that the next white kid in my year could splat some paints on a canvas, and not get interrogated (or interrogate himself) about the quality and purpose of it for his portfolio. There was one day at school I remember walking down every hallway tearing every single flyer for every club that existed off the walls, vowing I would go to all of the meetings. When it was time to go home, I threw them all away and broke down.
Joining anything new meant an immediate common app application plan. As outlandish as “How does having orange hair make you a special and qualified candidate for Cornell University?” “Were you the director of this black box play, or merely an extra?” “What breakthrough mathematical equation did you solve that makes you a stand-out application for M.I.T. undergrad?” I had no answers, so I walked past and continued with my weekly lessons.
After the gory violence, reckoning, and protests of this year, particularly with Black Lives Matter, writing on occupations seems bizarre. Why flesh out a story on something so trivial, one’s hobbies and interests? As in, why should I be complaining about a mundane activity from over a decade ago of violin practice every week? Shouldn’t we be “more focused”, on things like the NYC Chinatown hate crimes, people hurling hateful slurs on the street, missing Asian women? And- if privileged enough to afford private music lessons and higher education in the first place- why complain?
I think about how the leading cause of death for Asian-American youth ages 18–24 is suicide. I see it- an 18-year-old Korean second-generation student off to med school only to drown in the library, a first-generation 7th grader already stressed out over her maths level and if it’s on par for scholarships. I see successful suicide attempts during finals week when the stress boils over, a psychiatric inpatient visit after 4 straight nights of no sleep. These issues are not trivial, these people are all self-harm risks. If you don’t feel in control of your life and what you love to do, how are you going to want to feel alive?
When we look at the population of “Asian-Americans”, we have the highest income disparity gap of any racial group in America. According to the latest Census, only 20% of working creatives come from a working-class background. Working-class artists should vent on social media about passing up another unpaid internship or working inhumane hours. Studio time doesn’t exist working 50 hours a week. Stark differences of economic disparities bleed out; time spent pondering identity and choice reserved for isolated, assimilated, modern Asian Americans. Superficial disputes on Scarlett Johansson’s role as an Asian woman, boba quality, and occasional ‘mixed’ comments start to sound stale to the wrong ear. And they should.
I think of Anthony Vesana So, beloved Cambodian writer and author of esteemed book “Afterpartues”, famously on a New York Times issue after passing of unexpected causes, who struggled with mental health for years. He was a young queer creative, caught between cultures who coped with addiction.
I also think of Yukio Mishima, creative figure of many disciplines, who had a hardened father that would often fly into fits of rage, barging into his room to search it and ripping apart his manuscripts and writing. He was only about 12. Still, Mishima’s mother encouraged his writing, which he hid, and he became a notorious actor, poet, and author. The eradication of what is loved is painful. It builds resentment and cannot stay stagnant. We’ve seen it through Asian friends in higher education who go no contact with their parents after they finally stand up to them and drop out of pre-med, or suddenly sell their competitive gear and disappear. The emotions were building for years and needed to let go. True freedom is not being “allowed” to have interests being met with overwhelming cultural pushback, it’s a cage open with one lock still stuck.
If we only speak up with unspeakable atrocities and attacks happening within our communities, are we truly thriving as “Asian Americans”? This year has taught us that it is more than possible to care about multiple issues- where we are at, it’s become necessary. The nuanced ways in which these two things — hobbies and interests — are bent and deformed, to fit America’s narrative as white assimilation, are as important to me as feeling safe walking down the street. Setbacks of hope- subtracting the ability to choose, quickly add up.
Love language in Asian-American families cannot be pinned down to one, but it took years to realize mine was pushing. These pressures are well-meant and taken from a time when doing extremely well at one vocation WAS the answer out of poverty, redlining, pain. We have the choice, they didn’t. If one suffered, the next must. Must be good, never quit. Quitting is for those who don’t know how to work. If you quit, you’ll never know just how good you can be. You’ll be better off.
But I also know if we had more honest conversations inter-familially not about what it is we want to “do” in life, but what makes us feel alive- the shackles of depression would be freed.
There are many contributing factors to the mental health epidemic among Asian-American youth, and I strongly believe perfectionism is one. Our lives as minorities, whether striving towards the “American dream” or not, do not end when we are in the bottom 50% of our class, go to community college to figure things out, or fail our entrance exam.
When thinking of the work of Asian-American creatives and writers — such as writer Ocean Vuong, musicians Japanese Breakfast, Mitski, and Audrey Nuna- I see them letting my coming-of-age self taste that burger. All of these creatives have varied areas of artistry — Michelle of Japanese Breakfast creates indie rock, Audrey Nuna raps, Ocean Vuong gravitates towards self memoir novels on his racial and familial experience. What we choose to pursue in life or our creative endeavors cannot be pinned down to one specific style or topic, just like any other race in America. We are now making mistakes, creating bad art, and quitting when things aren’t working. Asians do quit.
The magic of an individual’s interest, hobby, or chosen vocation today- is that in an increasingly unpredictable era, its ownership. So much has been taken away from us this year — elders passing, mosques burnt, headlines, the all-encompassing feeling of endangerment. The more I see think pieces or social media posts about the in-between, the unsaid of “Asia America”, the more I feel we have autonomy. We are no longer 10, crying in the backseat on the way to our violin lesson.
Now, my trans, queer nonbinary body is filled with adornments and additions that were competitiveness of none. I could get top surgery, go on hormones (or not), dress masculinely, be in drag, get piercings. These were all decisions that filled me with joy, and many could be quit at any time. HRT is not permanent, and also my decision. The body that was given to me was not my choice, this was.
Pursuing art, also, brought me peace. If it all went to shit, I could quit. Technically bad work is somewhat due diligence as a starting artist, and it was for me. There is no ultimate higher contest to win as a creative, and I and others are vocationally healed with that. All I could do is stay authentic, true to myself, and sometimes, quit.
