Annie Tsai

As a country, we’ve been deep in celebrating AAPI Heritage Month. Why May, you ask? Well, May was chosen to commemorate the first Japanese immigrants to come to the US May 1843, and to acknowledge all of the work that Chinese immigrants put into laying the Transcontinental Railroad, which was completed May 1969. 

And yet, imagine after all those years being away from their families to build this expansive rail system and being fundamentally transformative in building California’s viticulture infrastructure and planting the majority of Sonoma County’s 3.2m grapevines which today represent 90% of US wine production, being the first racial group to be fully barred from entering the US solely based on one’s race (see Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, effectively lasting 83 years). It still surprises me how much policy gets put into law on the basis of fear alone. 

Fast forward to 2024, the AAPI community represents the fastest growing ethnic group in the US representing over 50 ethnicities. More than 100 languages are spoken and the term AAPI represents people from East and Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent and the Pacific Islands and their diasporas. 

In service to this year’s theme “Bridging Histories, Sharing Our Future,” I asked several people in the AAPI community: If there was one thing you wish non-AAPI people learned about your heritage, what would that be? Or, is there something that non-AAPI people get seriously wrong about your culture and you want to set straight? 

Words cannot describe how I felt reading the responses that came back. Perhaps simply  gratefulness for so much vulnerability and willingness to put themselves out there best encapsulates it.

“I am a quarter Chinese, raised in Hawaii with Chinese values. I am White passing and want people to see that there is more to me than my mixed cultures and lineage.” 

“Asian men and Asian women are racialized very differently.” 

“AAPI represents 6% of the US population but 26% of the people who are trafficked. People need to know that.”

“Thai people don’t usually eat with chopsticks. One of the country’s kings long ago was taken with European utensils so forks and spoons became the norm. I’ve heard people ask for chopsticks at Thai restaurants thinking that using them is more authentic – but it’s really not.”

“I’m half Chinese, half Korean, and my mother is Korean. I was raised on Korean food culture from my mother and my father raised me on Chinese Malaysian culture. Chinese and Koreans don’t normally mix from my generation. I grew up celebrating both cultures and appreciated being unique.”

“As an adult, I have begun to understand what it meant to leave one’s home country and come to one that wasn’t welcoming at all.”

“I hope that non-AAPI folks realize we aren’t a monolith (politically and otherwise). The subsets of our communities have all experienced different traumas and successes. This shapes who we are as Americans.” 

“My great grandfather arrived in the US in 1860. We’ve been here perhaps longer than you.”

“There can be overlap between curiosity, ignorance, and microaggressions. I wish non-AAPI people understood the impact of their comments, questions, and views on the AAPI community.”

“Many of us in the AAPI community live a delicate balance between tradition and adaptation. 

Our identities are not fixed in a single cultural framework, but rather a dynamic interplay, and beautiful synthesis of both. This creates internalized resilience and drive, and a lot of complexity in our lives.”

What I saw from many of these comments was a common thread which I often hear from people of other racial groups which have immigrated to the United States over the past 200 years – complexity around generational, gender, and other intersectional experiences, unimaginable sacrifice, stereotypes and expectations, the imprinting and influence other cultures have had on one’s own norms, and what it means to truly give up everything in the hopes of creating a better life for tomorrow. I want to say those pieces are a part of every ethnic group’s heritage – perhaps we all have more in common than we think we do. 

Our brains are programmed to want to categorize things. To find comfort in knowing that we belong here or there. But what I keep going back to is this – yes, we must acknowledge and celebrate the things that make us unique and special. But also – YES – there are so many aspects of all of our stories, lives, and heritages that cross race and ethnicity, and this is the foundation that we as a country have to build our tomorrow on. It’s what makes our country so special.