"Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall." ~ Joseph Conrad

In light of the controversy stirred by the Coke ad aired during the Super Bowl as well as my "feisty" rebuttal of said controversy on my Facebook page, there's something that's been weighing on me. Not just since Sunday, but for years. Many, many years. However, I think it's time that this bullshit come to light.

Me and my daddy circa. 1988

When I was a small child, we're talking 7 years old and under, there were no skin colors. There was no white or black or red or yellow. There was just the boy next door who pulled my hair and stuck my braids together with gum, the girl up the street who played "house" with me and triple-dog-dared me to stick my tongue to a pole like the kid in "A Christmas Story", the neighbor across the street who was friends with my parents and who pumped me full of sugar before sending me home for dinner. There was no good or bad there were just people. I always knew I wasn't quite like either of my parents. I knew that grandma was this thing called "Chinese" and spoke with a heavy accent that I couldn't understand sometimes, and that her skin and hair were both much darker than my mother's. I knew that China was a big country with a lot of other people who looked just like grandma and daddy and spoke like grandma and all my great aunts and uncles. I knew that my daddy was a mailman and my mother stayed at home with us all day. I knew that Monday through Friday (and often Saturday) daddy went to work and on Sundays we went to church. Until around 3rd grade, this was all I needed to know. That was the beautiful simplicity that was my world. 

Somewhere around this age was the first time someone pointed out to me that my family wasn't like other families. It was one of the few times my father made it to a swim lesson or a ballet recital or something that he usually was at work for and generally too busy to attend. This someone was probably another child my age. This someone told me I was a freak because I didn't look like my dad (or my mother for that matter). That we weren't "normal" because my parents weren't both white. I was asked if I was adopted and if they were my real parents and was I lying about it. It was then that my simple world started to shatter into a million little shards.

It was also around 7 or 8 years old when I first registered hearing my mother get upset regarding my grandmother and discovered her deep-seated resentment. Nope, it's not what you're thinking. Not the usual mother-in-law drama over the way she was raising the kids or keeping the house. Oh no, as far as I know, my grandmother never really minded my mother and if she did she was damn good at keeping quiet about it and spoiled her only 5 grandkids more than my mother would have liked. No, it was about what was said one particular Christmas. Or rather, in what language. 

My grandmother was born in Boston in 1924, but even now, 90 years later, you'd think she just immigrated from China. Her accent has always been thick and she has always conversed mostly in Chinese. Oh, she can speak English and she understands everything that's being said to her or near her or about her, but her native language has always been her language of choice. My father has only spoken English my entire life, even to her, but understands grandma perfectly. It was always easier for grandma to just fire off whatever she needed to say to my father in Chinese rather than fight through the alien English words. It wasn't uncommon for me to hear the barrage of Chinese coming from grandma's mouth to my father's ears from our kitchen whenever she was visiting. 

This particular Christmas began with the inundation of Chinese directed at my father the second the door opened. I was in the kitchen with my mother "helping" with dinner and over the foreign noise from the other room I heard under my mother's breath:

"Seriously, this is just so damn disrespectful."

"What is?"

"Speaking that, that language in my home."

"But why? Me and daddy are Chinese and she's speaking Chinese."

"This is America, this is my house, and it's rude and she should be speaking English."

Even at such a young age, I knew there was something wrong with this. Very very very wrong with this. My mother may as well have slapped me in the face. What was so wrong with being Chinese? I mean, daddy is Chinese. My mother married my father knowing full well that he was Chinese. Couldn't it be more than safe to assume that her children would be little half-breeds and that at some point she'd have to have interaction with more Chinese people, many of them non-native English speakers? Apparently this never crossed her mind...only a slight oversight, no big. 

This conversation became a tradition with my mother and I for the years I continued to live in and visit my parents' house. Obviously it got more heated and more complicated the older I got, generally with me throwing in something about how if she didn't like grandma being Chinese then clearly she didn't like me or any of my siblings. But clearly "that's different." It stung then and it still stings now and it stings every single time I hear someone say that "we're in America, speak English." Even worse, it's burned the times that it's either been implied or blatantly said that I'm not really an American because I'm not totally white. I'm told that I get "credit for speaking English" rather than the alternative and there are some who write me off the second they find out I'm a mixed bag of cultures. And then, God forbid I start arguing the fact that English speakers aren't really Americans and pointing out the importance of diversity in our society (without it, enjoy your lack of Chinese food). This tends to start World War III and I don't like fighting stupid people. I'd rather go bang my head against a brick wall, please and thank you.

While this lovely conversation generally comes from older generations, which is almost more expected, I've even gotten this sort of commentary from people my own age. It always shocks, it always stuns, and it most definitely always infuriates and fuels my hatred of the ignorant people and their stupidity in this world no matter who it comes from. However, coming from my own mother, regardless of the overly tumultuous and resentment-filled relationship we've maintained at best, it never ceases to amaze me. I almost expect this bullshit and ridiculousness from the world, but never from my own flesh and blood.

I have no easy answer to this, because if there were, we wouldn't be here in 2014 still actively fighting this issue. Hell, I don't even have the answer to the years of trying to combat it living under my parents' roof. What I will say, and I've said it a million times, and I'll say it a million and one more, I'm damn proud to be this ridiculous mix of ethnicities and cultures. I'm damn proud I'm Chinese and I'm damn proud to be my father's daughter and my grandma's granddaughter. This makes up a huge part of who I am, so pretty much accept it, deal with it, or kindly see yourself to the door and don't let it hit you in your ass on the way out. If you want to bitch about something about me, bitch about something I can change. I can't change this part of me, and I wouldn't want to even if I could.