Who and what claims you?

Origin stories

My real hometown

I was born in New York City and spent my early childhood there. I love New York City deeply; the tempo of the 7 Train is the beat that drives my entire psyche. When I lived in NYC for about two years, from 2010-2012, I remember getting on the 7 Train to Queens for the first time in my adult life and nearly screaming with recognition. The ka-thunk ka-thunk of the train hitting the seams of the track resonated with my own mind’s rhythm. Something that seemed random was finally no longer. This sound, this beat finally had an origin.

I nearly fell onto the subway car floor. I was more in love with NYC than ever.

And I was already in love with NYC to begin with: Witness the time I went to pick up my car from the impound lot along the Hudson. We New Yorkers were shivering in the waiting area for all our vehicles. I was beaming like an idiot because I was so fucking happy all the time in NYC.

One of the New Yorkers asked, “What are you smiling about?”

I replied, “Isn’t it awesome just to be in New York City?”

“You’re crazy,” they replied.

“That!” I said. “It makes me even happier just to hear it.”

I found the place I belonged. And that place loved me back in its own peculiar way, with a response to my call. When I waited in line, a butcher would always hustle the line forward just as I lost my patience. My rapid-fire speech was in alignment with other folks at last. My brisk walking pace, so out of place in California, was in sync with everyone else.

When I got pregnant, I moved back to Berkeley. But even now, a dozen years later, people still think I live in New York City. It has claimed me, because I claimed it.

My fake hometown

But this post is not just about New York City. This post is also about Arcadia, the most ironically named city in America. Arcadia is where I spent most of my childhood, my school years.

In case you didn’t know: Arcadia is a poetic term that refers to unspoiled wilderness and more specifically, an unattainable utopia. “Lucky” Baldwin bought the parcel of land in 1875. The story goes that he gasped "By Gads! This is paradise!" when he first saw it. He named it “Arcadia” (probably unironically) when he incorporated it in 1903 into an official city.

Arcadia is where I moved in the middle of first grade, in 1979. I arrived right before Christmas and had to catch up on the school Christmas pageant music lyrics. I didn’t know who Jesus Christ was and why there was a manger and what a manger was. I was pale. Everyone else was tan. I learned English could be different; Californians thought I spoke English weird.

Arcadia was where a girl named Suzanne would rip the corner of my papers when it came time to pass them back to me. When I told my teacher this was happening, she waived me off. Arcadia was where I learned that teachers gave no shit about a new girl of Korean descent.

Arcadia is where I met my first best friend, R, who looked a lot like a young Ron Howard. Decades later, I asked why he came up to me and said hello when no one else did. He told me he was a new student, too. No one would claim him, so we claimed each other.

Arcadia today is majority Asian. When I tell people how racist and awful Arcadia was, the going response is, “But isn’t it all Asian now?”

I didn’t realize in my elementary school years that the social resistance to me was mostly racially-charged. In sixth grade, I auditioned for the part of Mrs. Claus in the Christmas pageant. I memorized my lines, practiced my delivery. My favorite teacher, Mrs. Cowan, was part of the selection committee. I was sure I nailed it.

Mrs. Cowan pulled me into her classroom during recess after I learned I didn’t get the part. She looked so mad. And she was, her curly red hair fiery, and her blue eyeshadow shimmering. She took me by the shoulders and said I should take drama classes in junior high and to not let this stop me. She said I had the best audition out of everyone else, and I should have gotten the part.

I wasn’t particularly discouraged. I’d auditioned on a lark. But I did ask (very sincerely), “If I was the best, then why didn’t I get the part?”

“Don’t let this stop you!” she responded.

It didn’t occur to me that race was the issue until years later. But I did remember that conversation, because it felt so emotionally laden. Because I felt Mrs. Cowan’s rage on my behalf.

At some point, Arcadia was all white, like most of America. Arcadia was 99% white until the mid 1980s. It was a Sundown Town, where among other things, real estate agents gatekept home ownership. I didn’t learn until much later that our family was one of the city’s very first non-white homeowners.

In the beginning, I was a lone oddball. Not very threatening. But foreign, nonetheless. I was invited into friend’s homes and asked whether or not Koreans were able to eat ravioli, as if I weren’t human at all. It was easy to prove them wrong, as they watched me relish stuffed pasta.

In 1980, Arcadia was 4% Asian. In 1985, the town was 9% Asian. 23% in 1991. In 2010, Asians consisted of 59.% of the population. By 2020, Arcadia was 65% Asian (Wikipedia). It became the first American location of Din Tai Fung, home of amazing Taiwanese soup dumplings.

In chart format, the population growth of Asians in Arcadia looks like this:

If you’re a white supremacist, that’s kind of frightening, I know.

I lived in Arcadia from 1979-1991. I was one of1% in 1979 and then I was one of 23% in 1991.

Anecdotally, I’ll say the greatest increase in Asian immigration occurred between 1985 and 1986 when at the beginning of the eighth grade school year, there were dozens of new Asian faces wearing different kinds of clothes, who were as pale-faced as I was in 1979. (Now that I’ve made a chart, my anecdotal evidence might align with reality). Many of my friends (all of whom were white to this date, given that everyone else other than me was white) started calling them "Fresh Off the Boat,” and worse. Very much worse. There were cross burnings in the town. Swastikas spray painted onto lockers. To this day, I get random messages on social media from childhood classmates who apologize to me for their childhood racism.

In order to differentiate myself as someone who “belonged,” I tanned myself more deeply. I bleached my hair. My adoption of California Valley Girl speak became complete. Dear Reader: I had a severe and very tragic case of internalized racism.

I hated myself. My “hometown” hated me. Everyday of my teenagehood, I had to hear someone telling me to “go back home” or calling me a “chink.” I’d like to say home was better than school, but school was the safer of the two worlds. And school was a racist wonderland. It was an achievement-oriented viper pit. It was a miserable jail. I knew I would leave and never go back. To this day, Arcadia has never claimed me. And I don’t claim it, either.

By the time I graduated high school, I’d resolved my case of internalized racism. I’d turned it into chronic depression and a deep disdain for racists. Most of my friends were Asian. And I decided to enroll in the university where I felt like I most belonged and where I could go a week without being called a chink.

The Racial Draft

I don’t know if you’re old enough to have watched Dave Chapelle (back before Dave Chapelle went sideways and transphobic) in his initial brilliant years, but he had a show called “Chapelle’s Show.” Of many brilliant sketches, one, called “The Racial Draft,” was a parody of pro-sports drafts in which America's ethnicities divvy up racially ambiguous celebrities.

Up for the draft? Tiger Woods (circa 2004, at the height of his popularity and fame and pre-fallout), Lenny Kravitz, the Wu-Tang Clan, O.J. Simpson (at the nadir of his popularity), Eminem, and Madonna were all drafted into a (potentially) different race based on their perceived ethnicity or cultural appropriation and—let’s face it—desirability. The Jews claimed Lenny Kravitz. Tiger Woods was claimed 100% Black (The Asians were upset to lose him). The Asian delegation then claimed the Wu-Tang Clan. The whites claimed Colin Powell (the Black delegation was okay with this, so long as the white delegation also claimed Condoleeza Rice). There was disowning in the claiming.

It’s hilarious. But it strikes a nerve, maybe even triggers (remember picking teams for kickball in elementary school?) But it’s also a pertinent question about who claims us and when (and what we ourselves claim). And this is a question I ponder. Are you good enough? Are you Korean enough? Are you nice enough? Are you…”ENOUGH?”

Our origin story is a narrative

Being claimed is part of an origin story. Despite living in Berkeley (on and off, but with roots here) for thirty-three years, I’m not sure I’m publicly known as a Berkeleyan. Certainly, when my memoir came out, I never saw it on a “local authors” bookshelf, even though bookstores carried several copies of my book. People thought I still lived in NYC. They still do. I don’t mind, but it is interesting; do people believe this, because I claim NYC, because I’ve somehow subconsciously communicated that that is where my heart resides?

Which leads me to do an inventory of what I claim in my life. And what I’ve discarded. Life is a series of choices. Identity is a series of choices. Sometimes very difficult choices, the ones that tear you from the cruel familiar to the hopeful unknown.

Claiming things is a matter of the heart.

Arcadia barely exists in my narrative. In fact, the Arcadia I know, no longer exists in reality. It is now a majority-Asian town with a mall that is so luxe I hardly recognize it. My childhood house has transformed, too; the new owners tore off the facades, replaced the front doors, and park their cars on the lawn that we used to weed by hand. None of the old neighbors are there. The only thing that remains the same is the race track and Mount Wilson, which loomed large in my window some days hazy through pink smog and other days crystalline against blue sky, like an insurmountable wall.