Student Creative Work

here are three unoriginal thoughts:

1. i am not canadian enough to fit in here;

2. i am not asian enough to fit in there;

3. i am too big to fit in a single checkbox of “east asian” or “southeast asian”, a single story of where i’m really from.

wow, how unique, how special, how new,

an asian playing the race card,

a second-generation immigrant not belonging,

why don’t i go and cry about it

instead of smearing it all over you.

look, i know you’re bored.

i have seen the tiktoks, the reels, the memes,

making fun of feelings like these felt by people like me.

but before you go, please, maybe just listen

to three more maybe somewhat original thoughts:

1. it’s not that i’m not canadian enough. it’s not that i haven’t ordered enough tim horton’s or played enough street hockey or lived through enough ice-storm-induced power outages. it’s that my hair is the black-brown of a longan seed instead of the russet of potatoes or the yellow of corn. i can say “i was born in canada” in my perfectly unaccented english until my face is as blue as the eyes which would buy my acceptance and it would not change a thing.

2. i really am not asian enough, though. i am more filipino than anything else but i can’t uncomplicate myself with such an exclusive label. the last time i went to the philippines i probably would have starved if my mother had not had mercy and taken me to mcdonald’s twice a week. china is in my dna but not in my blood; my father has never seen that land and neither have i. i didn’t learn how to use chopsticks until i was thirteen years old and i think i still hold them wrong. there are white men who speak better mandarin than me. i know this because they test it on me and ask if their accent is good. i say “i would not know” a million times and it does not change a thing.

3. but i am still just asian enough to be laughed at and not asian enough to do more than laugh back. laugh at their ignorance in saying such things to someone as un-asian as me.

i don’t even have monolids, so i just laugh. no one is ever named anything remotely like ching chong, like fu manchu, like hi lo piccolo, like pots and pans falling, so i just laugh. i’m allowed to find it funny, but i’m not allowed to hurt. i’m allowed to call it “casual hatred,” “violent ignorance”. i’m just not allowed to call it racism.

sure, you’ve heard second-generation immigrants talk about language and culture and how for them it forms an endless grey, but what happens when you fall into the grey area of hate?

my parents were spat at during one of their neighbourhood walks last week, and i realize

that if ever i became the victim of a hate crime

the hardest parts of reporting it would be

1. swallowing the revelation that my inadequate asianness doesn’t protect me

2. deciding which checkbox to squeeze myself into.