God, I Love Sherman Alexie

"Ni hao."

"Oh, I don't speak Chinese. I'm Korean."

"Wait, what?"

"Yeah."

"I totally thought that you were Chinese."

"Well, I'm not, haha."

"So, you're Korean. North or South?"

"Uh, yeah, my family totally crossed over DMZ into South Korea, somehow afforded a plane ticket to Midwestern America, and managed to live in a well-to-do suburban community."

"...Oh, wow."

And, like any other self-respecting Korean, I would loudly defend my proud South (NOT North) Korean nationality. This conversation is bound to happen with almost all of my friends. It just does. And I'm not spiteful or angry, it just happens. And that's okay.

***

After having read Sherman Alexie's "fictional" memoir, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, as well as another of his hilarious books, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, I've decided to address what it means to be the first child of an Asian immigrant family in a well-to-do suburban community.

Let's begin.

Granted, stereotypes exist for some sort of truth, whether minorities like it or not, and, I'm ashamed to say, that a lot of my Asian friends (okay, all of my friends) fit a good number of them.

For example, due to America's view of Asians and from what stereotypes I'm aware of, I am supposed to...

Have small slits for eyes

Have extremely conservative and strict parents.

No speak Engrish.

Be unathletic.

Be a piano virtuoso or a violin virtuoso.

Have a blackbelt in kung fu.

Be a doctor or engineer when I grow up.

Have no fashion sense.

And look like everyone else in China, Japan, and/or Korea.

Of course, I fit all of these.

I'm kidding! I'm kidding. 

I never took kung fu.*

But the sad truth about Native Americans or even all other ethnicities is the dark side that occupies each one of them. I bet you don't want to hear about the tear-filled nights of bad grades, or the frustrations of an "A-Average Asian" to become the best that her parents pushed her to be. The hours of intense solitude sprinkled with the hope of making it to the Ivies. The resentment, the resignation, the stress. You don't want to hear about that, just like how it's painful to read Alexie's dark tales of booze-filled, hunger-filled, and hopeless experiences on a reservation. And yet, at the same time, it's these experiences that bring us closer to one another. Anecdotes of punishments, lectures, and that "one time when," help us to cope with our own dark secrets. The kind that are shared by everyone. 

*I took judo.