// JOURNAL | Healed, resealed.

In America, I am still an outsider. My exterior gives me away—the black hair, the olive skin, the almond-shaped eyes. Though I was born here and act American a girl as any, I am only what I appear.

But for years, I claimed—clung to, even—my American identity. I didn’t want to be the girl, 5’4″ with the thick, toneless American accent, the one relatives called gwai lo (鬼佬)—ghost person, white. I didn’t want to be the lost cause, the girl too American, a walking symbolic gesture of the Chinese culture that was to be lost with my generation.

I couldn’t handle that burden.

I remembered all too well that, in my sixth grade year, I bunked with three Chinese girls for science camp in the Santa Cruz mountains. We ate spaghetti in the mess hall, and while brushing our teeth and peering into the bathroom mirror to check our complexion, I confessed that I had never once used chopsticks; the fork was my tool of choice. Through the mirror, I saw their faces contort and I witnessed my own alienation. “How can you be so white-washed?” said one girl with braided pigtails and wire-framed glasses.

Later that year, my mom handed me a book, with a missing cover and pages bound together by a single strip of yellow masking tape: a Cantonese how-to book in blocky serif. For weeks, I pored over characters, repeated phrases in my room, said I would be Chinese, wished so hard I once yelled at parents over dinner, “Why couldn’t you teach me?” Faces blank, they stared across the dinner table, before speaking softly, “But then you wouldn’t know English so well.” I folded my arms, and sunk into my seat.

Somehow, I got to thinking that if I couldn’t be Asian, I could be American. I could be what I had always been—the girl in jeans and a tshirt, listening to rock music, dreaming of someday being a songwriter or an author.

I thought these things, but when I was 21 and in Nevada, seven white boys looking no older than 12 biked by and yelled, “Asian domination! Go back to your own country!” There were folks around—all white, all older—but no one looked, didn’t even say a thing. I’ve never even been across the Pacific Ocean.

Still, there were other reminders indicating that I did not conform to the traditional expectations of America—in magazine racks at the supermarket or while window-shopping in the City. A flip through a beauty magazine usually meant more years spent toying with makeup, uninstructed. Shopping at large retailers only meant needing to special order my petite-sized jeans.

I once knew a girl who went card shopping for Father’s Day, looking specifically for a card featuring an Asian father. Having finally found a greeting card with an Asian baby on the cover, she flipped it open to find the words, “Congratulations on your adoption.”

Thus, still stands the definition of American that is left unspoken: one converging on white America. We amend the term to Asian American, Latin American, African American, because American alone doesn’t seem to describe our plight. It seems to betray the struggles before us and omit the fact that America isn’t always made for us minorities, that we still are very much confined by the skin from which we have tried to escape through our American identity. The American nationality is not the great melting pot of lore, but rather one that hinges on the idea that the “true American” belongs to the white culture of which we, the minorities, are not necessarily a part.

Though there is no easy answer to who is American and who isn’t, I suggest that these are titles—Asian American, Latin American, African American—that are more than categories for surveys or censuses. They are forms of identification and, as such, comprise a person at some basic level. The term Asian American specifically is necessary because it represents who we are, and to call us only American or only Asian is to deny the complications that make these demarcations difficult.

On a slightly related note, happy 4th! Check out that Jump 5 performance—it’s a favorite of mine. Makes you feel patriotic, doesn’t it?

A few days ago, I watched the World Cup match, U.S. vs. Ghana, with friends at a low-lit bar/restaurant in Berkeley. There were 20, maybe 25, of us crowded around rectangular tables we had pulled together to form an L-shape. Hung above were yellow fluorescent lights, a silver, dangling disco ball, and a tacky Odouls sign. Opposite the room sat one tall guy who clapped and cheered every time anyone on screen so much as touched the ball. Clearly at the place to be, we shared beer, stories, and some curly fries from down the street.

At 10 minutes left in the game, the U.S. was attempting to score—presumably, they hadn’t been trying this hard the entire game. We shouted each time the ball came near the net, grazing the goal posts and catching mostly grass. 10 minutes up, still no goal. Ghana had won. The one Ghana supporter in the room screamed, and the “I love every unimportant thing about soccer” guy joined him in celebration. After a couple of minutes passed, the bar owner—a chubby Asian man wearing shorts, a tshirt, and baseball cap—walked by our tables, and began chanting, “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” When we looked awkwardly on, silent, he stopped and shuffled back behind the counter.

I suppose I should feel more disappointed that the U.S. lost. Admittedly, like most of America, I’m not that into soccer, despite the compelling reasons why I should be. But like Justin Bieber at the BET awards, we really had no reason being there–and, needless to say, my American spirit suffered little damage.

The last time I watched a good game of soccer was in 2006 when the U.S. played Italy in the World Cup. With friends, I sat at a small restaurant in Rome. The U.S. drew because someone (Italy?) kicked the ball into their own goal, and we cheered, like the obnoxious foreigners we were. The rest of the restaurant scowled, and we weren’t sure whether to fear more for our personal safety or for the sanitary state of our food.

I should probably watch more soccer.

I tidied up the portfolio portion of my website. This blog is next. Feel free to take a look around my portfolio (www.joannakwong.com) until then!

I don’t think much about graduation, other than acknowledge the fact that it actually happened (mostly to remind myself that, yes, that memory was real). On occasion, this leads me to question my emotional capacity. While others write lovingly of Pomp and Circumstance and reflect so vividly on the blissful four years spent away from home–years largely spent at a frat house or in an underground library (which sounds more appealing, I don’t know. I’m certainly tempted to opt for the library.), strung out on coffee and little sleep–I’m here hardly remembering the four years happened at all. I’m neither sad nor nostalgic, and not nearly at a point where I’m compelled to evoke poetry to set the mood. Instead, it feels almost like a matter of stoicism–if it’s even quite possible to feel stoicism at all. For me, it’s fours years, check. It was fun, and yo, we’ll talk. Maybe all those rustling thoughts haven’t settled yet, and besides, I have another good 6 months. For now, all I can say is, we’ll see.

In between graduations and finals and moving out and moving on, I haven’t had a lot of time to write, especially here. Unfortunately for me, I also have a terrible memory when it comes to great ideas and snazzy lines that mandate their own entries. Sometimes, when I’m driving down the highway, NPR blasting through the speakers, a brilliant idea hits and I can see the words scrawl out on the paper folds of my brain. I’ll mumble the words to myself a few times, replay every shot of sentence structure in my mind, and watch as the words order themselves like children on a playground told to organize themselves in alphabetical order. Just when I think I have it, that I have it down well enough for the car ride and can wait for pen and paper, it’s gone and nowhere to be found. Ten minutes pass, and I repeat the words once more, but this time, they feel lackluster and I convince myself, “No, it definitely wasn’t that. It was better than that. Much better.” But it wasn’t. It was just a bad idea to begin with. Or a great idea, and I really did forget it, missed my chance at an early Pulitzer.

World Cup started, and if you’re American, I assume you don’t care. Is it un-American to root for any team other than Amerrrrrrica? (I spell “America” the way I say it. Like an American.)

Summer is getting ready to pick up once more, and I’m looking forward to filling up my schedule so that it bears an uncanny resemblance to my schedule during just about every other month of the year. I’ll keep you posted.

I said I liked sad songs. He said he didn’t. He told me that he liked songs that were both happy and sad at the same time. I said I didn’t like pretending, didn’t like saying something is what it isn’t. If I’m sad, I want a sad song quietly lulling in the background, not a sad song wrapped in major key. Then there will be no false pretenses, only what it is and what it isn’t. I think it’s better this way.

However true this might be, I think I continually resent the feeling of shock (vocalized as, “…Crap.”) that coincides with the onset of last-minute panic. As in the feeling that I am currently feeling.

Happy Mother’s Day!

I’ve lapsed back into my poor, unkempt habits of not writing, which is a thing to be mourned. Will fix that soon enough. Would fix it better had I not academic papers to write and finals for which to study.

In other news, I imagine that nearly a week ago I swallowed a small cat with snowy fur and sharp claws, and that as the saliva welling in my mouth washed down my throat, carrying with it the small cat, the cat resisted, outstretched its claws and clung fiercely to the fleshy inside of my throat. every. single. inch. of. the. way. down.

What I mean to say is that I’m congested with a terrible sore throat. Also, I’m thankful for Halls and sugarless cough drops.

He opened the door, with the left of his shoulder. I followed him in, grabbed two glass plates from the cupboard in the kitchen. He laid the cardboard pizza box onto the kitchen table, under which an old phonebook balanced an uneven leg, and shrugged off the straps of his book bag. Grease was already staining the sides of the box, like painted clouds forming on blank canvas. Lifting the box’s lid, I placed two slices onto each plate. We crossed the room, slouched into the couch, and paused only briefly to admire the potatoes and carmelized onions atop Cheeseboard’s finest. We held hands and then there was silence, then talk. In a couple of months, the apartment will be emptied of all its furniture. These are things I will remember.

I’m a week late for this, what? No, no, I’m fashionably on time—or on Berkeley time and terrible at math (fact). Something or the other.

Some girls don’t like beer, and frankly, I don’t see what’s all that wrong with it. Granted, I’m not a big drinker, to which I attribute my physical inability to retain it. Still, beer isn’t all that bad. It’s not like it’s the type of drink who always forgets to put the toilet seat back down, or the type of drink who listens to Justin Bieber at full volume in the computer lab. Give beer the benefit of the doubt. Provided you’re not downing truckloads of Miller Light, beer might actually be nice company, like cheese shakers in a pizza parlor or cardboard sleeves in a coffeehouse. After all, it’s velvety smooth and a beautiful bronze, willing to comfort on lonely nights and say all the right things at all the right times. Good deal, I’ll say. Better than them vampires.

It’s always such a bummer when everyone leaves, mostly because I never seem to.

Being here, always here, floating between cities 30 minutes apart, feels lonely at times. Everyone passes through, comes and goes. You witness it all. The transience strikes you as the temporality that it really is: a visual reminder that things change, time moves, life goes on.

Here is that position you’re not meant to access, that niche that defies the effects of time and weather. You’re not supposed to be here, when everyone else has lives outside a 30-mile radius and memories of different interstates with better/worse weather.

No, you’re supposed to be out there somewhere, equipped with a new area code and local supermarket you frequent. Things should be fresh and new and different. You shouldn’t be here. Be anywhere. Anywhere but here.

I have a love-hate relationship with home. It’s constraining and old, laden with problems and past, but somehow home still retains quaint familiarity that makes it consistently pleasant. Still, I think I need out. Just for a little bit. Give me another city, country, continent even—it’ll be a breath of fresh air. I’ll pack my bags for the next plane out. Au revoir, Pacific.

I don’t like goodbyes, even if they’re only 10-week goodbyes. I avoid them if possible. I like pretending that there’s tomorrow and maybe tomorrow, we can do lunch. What do you say?