My Asian American Experience

I associate myself closely with the Asian American experience. Being born in America, but raised as a product of a traditional Chinese family, I feel that I have an interesting history. My upbringing can be seen as a representation of a new wave of Asian immigrants. While Asian immigrants have a long and dubious history in the United States, it is only recently that Asians have even started to become accepted in mainstream "American" culture. Being the first child born to my family in the U.S., I feel a great deal of pressure and responsibility. While some of my family members have remained in China and Taiwan, they look to my brother and I as the future, and their goals and expectations of us are very high. In 1973, my mother immigrated to the United States. She arrived legally with the help of her older sister, Eve. She arrived with her first son, David, who was already two years old. My father was still abroad, working as a merchant marine and sailing around the world. He was the captain of his ship, a leader of a large crew of men, which transported cargo to many different regions. Upon my mother's arrival in the U.S., he remained at this position for three more years, and then retired from the profession and moved on to join his family in America. As new immigrants to this country, my parents struggled a great deal. Not speaking any English, they managed to survive only through personal savings, the financial support of family members back home in Taiwan, and from other relatives in the U.S. Eventually, they decided that they would use some of the capital they had to open a small grocery store in the small neighborhood of Sunnyside, Queens. The business became quite successful and in the summer of 1978 my parents' second child was born. I was that second child. In the early stages of my life, my grandmother contributed significantly to my upbringing. My parents were always busy at the store. My brother, aunt, and baby-sitters took care of me when my grandmother went back to Taiwan. As I grew older and more self-reliant, I came to understand how the world operated. I always used to help my dad out at the deli, and it was here where I learned a lot about the world. I observed how some people treated my father rudely, merely because he spoke English with an accent. On the other hand, I also saw how some people were very kind to my parents. They were delighted at how polite and kind my parents were and always glad to help my parents when they needed it. It was in this environment where my parents and I learned how this strange country worked. Some people tried to take advantage of us while others sought to help. There was a time when my family felt firsthand the horror of racism. One morning my father arrived at the store to open it and found graffiti all over the front gate of the store. The gate was a metal fence that covered all the glass up. There were writings all over the fence and it really defaced the value and appearance of our store. In addition, racial epithets were scattered throughout the graffiti as well. Remarks such as, "Get out chinks" and "Chinaman go home" were quite devastating to my father. We had to spend a good deal of money to clean the graffiti and some of it was spray painted so heavily that we could not remove it at all. Eventually, the troublemakers would return and continue to deface our property. My father decided that there was no point to clean it anymore, since they would merely return to do the same again. Another episode that I remember clearly from the past was one where an individual tried to take advantage of my family because we were Asian. While Asian Americans were always seen as a passive race who would accept whatever abuses society provided, my father stood his ground for what he believed in. One night, my father and I were closing up the store. I had been helping out by counting inventory when a drunken looking and dirty man entered the store. We had never seen this person before, which was odd because my family's business was largely a neighborhood business where most of the customers were regulars. …