Dear Young Bewildered and Reserved Asian Kid,

I use those words to describe you a young, bewildered kid of the way you look like to the outside world, and the word reserved due to your shyness. From times when you were little and would want to be by your mom or dad's side at every moment. When someone coming to your house like a family friend you’d peek your head out and cry when they would pick you up.  From birth to now, there has been one constant thing about your life. I’m not talking about your family, personality, smile, or even your facial expressions. No I’m talking about your heritage. Today you are in eleventh grade and you still remember back to that gloomy third grade day. Do you remember that day? That day was the first day you actually figured out you were “different” from your classmates. The weight of your heritage and your Asian-ness is pre-determined by your biological chance. Throughout the third grade you feel like it has been good, fun, and exciting. You have good friends, good teachers, but most notably your brown eyes filled with the hope and naive innocent view of the world you live in. However, on this day a day so important and significant that eight years later you still remember it. You every morning get driven to school by your dad and walk into school wearing a polo shirt (because it makes you look less skinny) and cargo shorts. You walk into class and get out your math homework and the planner that your mom signs. The teacher walks around to stamp every planner and ask a question like “What did you do last night”, “What did you eat for dinner”, “What did you eat for breakfast”. During class you learn how to multiply two numbers as the teacher writes on the board problems for the class to practice, in unison we all answer the questions. This day is different from all the other days before it, this day you find out you’re different from most people in your classroom. A day you still have engraved in your memory at the age of eight.  Let me start off by reminding you of the golden years of innocence the age of two to about eight. Do you remember the millions of VHS tapes all neatly labeled with black sharpie, with Vietnamese words transcribed on them all of which your parents have kept of you and your siblings. Like on the VHS tapes being of your first birthday (an important tradition in most Asian cultures, or your older brother getting off the airplane to be greeted by your dad). Let's start off with since you were born, your dad came to the US in 1988 and mom in March 2001. You were born in 2002, the child of two immigrants who came to America for a better opportunity for your older brother and one day for their other children. They came to America with the hopes and dreams of being able to work and support their parents and to give their kids the life they couldn’t afford to have in Vietnam. They left everything behind (parents, siblings, cousins, friends, and the language they knew). Your dad coming to the United States when he was only eighteen years old, speaking minimal english, working in a factory, your mom coming to America and raising your brother and one day you. With only one income it was a struggle to support the family in America and the family in Vietnam. The sacrifice that your mom was unable to fly back to Vietnam for the funeral of your grandma, because they needed to save the money to pay for gas or to pay for food. I’m pretty sure you already know about that but it did get better. Even though your parents were like most other parents, taking care of their kids, putting the kids first and making sacrifices, and being a champion for their kids. Right before you went to school it was  important that you would learn English. Let’s talk about you learning English… at the crack of dawn, waking up at 6:00 AM to travel from our home all the way to St. Louis. With tensions, tiredness, and a whining baby sitting in the back with the cries that are just as piercing as nails being scratched against a chalkboard. The whines and the desperate searching for the parking lot structure to be on time to have another meeting with the speech pathologist. Arriving after a long trek of two hours, but feeling more like a million years. Opening the back door to unhook the baby out of the blue car seat. Carrying him into a University by the name of University Washington in St. Louis, to meet with a speech pathologist and English Secondary Learners teacher. Walking through the dreary, arid, colorless halls to get to the elevator, with the floor being of white tiles. Approaching the elevator, pressing on the button to go up with the sound of a ding, we enter to press the second button to go up to the floor printed in black on the piece of paper. The elevator rising with the feeling of the elevator going up, the earlier crying baby has a grin on the face. The parents of this little child with the dad carrying the child walking out of the elevator, to be greeted with a “Good morning, who are you here to see”, as the novice english speaking dad turning to his wife to open up a large binder, that held names, addresses, appointment notices, notes, and reports. Flipping throughout the folder to find the name of the speech pathologist. After a search, finding it and handing the document to the receptionist. She then smiles and directs your parents over to the chairs in the waiting area.

For you looking back at that moment you are shocked of hearing the stories your parents retell of one of the language pathologist, in Missouri, told your parents that “speak to your son in English and not Vietnamese”, “you speaking to him in Vietnamese is not helping him, he’ll never be equal to his peers”, “it is vital that you don’t speak too much of your language”, “don’t you want your son to be American”. Your parents were not taken back or offended, for the most part because they did not understand what she was saying. Your parents didn’t understand the tone of the Missourian woman saying that to foreigners to be more American. However, this was a quintessential moment, the translator (a Vietnamese-American woman) was offended and translated and told my parents she thought it would be best to leave. For my parents they didn’t understand the insulting remarks, for them just as their parents, professionals like teachers and doctors are alway in the best interest. That professionals are always to be entrusted. Needless to say, after that the translator suggested a new speech pathologist and you never re-visited that speech pathologist again. You enter pre-school and this is a huge milestone. On the first day your mom and dad walk you in and you cry when they leave. Your mom loathes in the fact you miss her are missing her and don’t wanna let go. You have black hair, short, chubby arms, and a smile that has a huge gap on both rows of jaws. A little Vietnamese boy, who is kind and spends time with his mom in her nail salon. You went to school and played with toys, during nap time during kindergarten tossing and turning. You play with other kids in the playground and you like to go up and down the slides. You were like every other kid. Skip many years into the future, you’re now in third grade (the grade I mentioned  as a pivotal moment in your life). Third grades goes great for all you can tell, you like your teacher, until one day someone makes a comment that you don’t know what to say. One other kid ask you, “Why do you have such small eyes, do you eat dogs and cats?”. You have no idea what he means by those comments, you respond by saying “No, I don’t eat dogs and I don’t know I don’t have small eyes”. As funny as it sounds you had always thought in your life that everyone spoke two languages, just like you did. You had thought that you had normal sized eyes. That day you went home and starred in the bathroom mirror. I can still remember that dark brown eyed little Asian kid staring into the mirror, all the thoughts running through his mind but the most memorable so many years later, am I not the same as everyone else. I don't of course mean identical or being the same physically, emotionally, I mean am I not equal as my classmates. You look into your eyes today and see yourself as different. I was too young to have that taken out of me. You came out of the bathroom and started to cry, that night my parents talked to me about how not everyone is like each other and that we are each different with something different to offer to this world. My parents blamed themselves for not having that conversation with me. I tell them today, it was not at all their fault.

A major thing that you carry with me is the balance between my two lives. On one hand I have my Asian perspective, like at home and with my family. The other hand I have my public side of me with friends and at school. You throughout your life have carried with you the burden of the two worlds that you live in. On one hand you live in Bedford a majority white community, most of your friends are white, and the people you go to school with are white. In school you speak English with your friends, you eat sandwiches filled with roast beef, cheese, and crispy banana peppers, and snacks. You balance this world and side of your life with the other side of your life, your Asian Vietnamese side. You go to the temple, talk to your family in Vietnamese, participate in Lunar New Year. For Lunar New Year usually in February, you wear an ao dai, a traditional Vietnamese style of clothing. You go to the temple and help out, you participate in the traditional lion dance, you watch as firecrackers with the loud crackling sound burst your ears, and you talk to your friends who are your Vietnamese friends. The craziness and emotions in the air. You feel at home. Once the clock strikes 9:30, I  You get under the lion costume and practice your routine weeks before. You on that day, change your pants and get out of the ao dai for a moment, get in your place for the lion dance. You and the others dance in to the front of the temple, pass the gates and do your little routine. All during this the loud blaring of the traditional Vietnamese songs playing on the stereos. The phones with their flashes on recording this to show and send to their family in Vietnam. Years before, when my brother did it, watching it was so mesmerizing and exciting. Even after all these years of doing it, it still excites me. At home you speak Vietnamese to your mom, dad, siblings, and extended family. You go to Vietnam and the side of you that the world sees is out to shine, you talk to the locals, you talk to your family, you go out during the humid nights, and live life as if this was your total and only reality.

Throughout your childhood you balance the life of being at home and the front you put up at school. When you enter the building of Bedford Senior High School, it's like my skin color is evident but part of me is shed off once you walk through the back doors of B Hall. The interesting smells of mugginess, the sounds of chatter, the herds of students clumped together in their cliches walking through the halls, and the tiredness of students hauling around their book bags. At school you go to your classes, do fairly well in those classes, talk to friends, and eat a “normal” lunch. You carry with you the different lives that you live, on one hand you live the life of being a “typical” student in America and in what is an alternate universe, you live the life of being a good traditional Vietnamese boy. At school when people see me they see what you look like. A short, skinny, Asian kid with smaller eyes, and brown skin. The same thing the classmate in third grade saw, someone who is different (physically) from how they look. It is interesting to find that even after all these years I am still the same in the ways of how the world sees me. Even though some of my interest, my timidness has decreased a little bit, but my still yearning for being close to my parents.

If my older self had told me when I was in Elementary or even Junior High that I would one day feel good about being Asian and that things would get better with the words and torment from other kids, and the feelings of being sad about being Asian would no longer be felt, I’d probably look with my hopeful eyes and be gleaming with happiness, and tell everyone I was a fortune teller and talked to the future. I refrain from using the word bully, because it isn’t a bunch or a few kids attacking you but instead words. As corny as it sounds, words are a million times stronger than actions. I now being older would want to go back and tell my younger self to not shed tears about the words, because one day those kids will become possibly your friends even some might be sitting near you in your classes. I would also go back and tell those kids that they might’ve said it at the moment and forgotten, but I will carry those words with me until I got older. The words of “chink”, “ching-chong”, “go back home”, “squinty eye”, “blind kid”, “open your eyes”, just to name a few. For many years later, when you looked into the mirror those words looked right back at you with the spite that those words are intended use for. In truthfulness I much more enjoyed being young during those times, compared to now. In today's world its much tougher with the words of racist bigots who have no sense of politeness, chanting words of “build that wall”, “deport them out”, and “go back home”. One of those phrases heard probably by many young Asian Americans. Even as an eleventh grader, recalling all those memories so long ago, brings me to the brink of tears.

You are Asian. There are times when you wished you weren’t and that you were “normal”, but then you wouldn’t be who you are today. The experiences of being of my heritage has given me a unique perspective and view of the world. Without the weight, I wouldn’t be Donald. I would have the burden of another race, but I wouldn’t have race be quickly noticed by others and have stereotypes that latch onto my carried load of being Asian and the connotations that the word holds. Those three words are to describe you but do not summarize everything about you. Something, I wished I could tell you now reminiscing about the past. My parents while Immigrants, Asians, and proud Americans (even during this interesting period of our history)... are just like most other white, black, brown, yellow, purple, and blue colored parent out there in this world. Just like everyone else, I struggled and sometimes still struggle with the balance of my two worlds. I want you to know something, Donald, you are not alone. There are even white people (like those you sit side by side) who struggle with their two lives (some on more severe scales than others). You live a blessed life and everything will turn out the way it was intended. Donald, wipe up your tears and your sadness, talk to someone about your feelings and it will be better. Your life will be brighter and you will overcome the obstacles. Remember the words of “you were born this way”.

I’m rooting for you,

16 Year Old You