When I saw the title "Am I a Banana? And Other Identity Crises" I didn't know what it meant. I decided it must have some type of comedic aspect to it, I didn't expect it to relate to me.
The well-written piece by Katherine Ong describes the difficulties of being a "banana," meaning that physically she's Asian, but mentally she's considered "white." She uses humor to describe the troubles that she and many others just like her, face. She talks about being called "whitewashed" because she had grown up surrounded by mostly white Americans, and had adopted the same customs and "likes" as her peers. She also mentions the predicament of being 'too white to be asian but also too asian to be white.'
It was interesting to hear, and I was surprised by how strongly i connected with it. I myself am half black and half white, and in a way i could sort of understand what she meant, even though I'm not Asian. I don't exactly fit into either category either (black or white). People say things to me like "no you're different, you're practically white" or "oh my gosh i forgot you were black," which always leads to a small identity crisis.
There was one part in Katherine's piece where she describes a scene where she's with another asian friend of hers. They're looking in the mirror and her friend says to her "Like, I forgot I was Asian." Katherine said that she could understand that. It was funny because it's something that has happened to me before. I would look in a mirror and think to myself "holy crap I forgot I was brown" and then I'd spent a solid minute staring at my face in disbelief.