I believe that one of the hardest challenges is—ironically—to be unabashedly one’s self, to really and truly accept one’s imperfections, insecurities, and desires. For me, this has been a long path to acceptance, filled with confusion, internalized oppression, and self-hate. This essay is the natural endpoint of this path, of proving that I have really and truly accepted myself. It is still hard to talk about, but this acknowledgement and expression of my own perspective has been coming for a long time. I have learned to be proud, of myself, of my people, of my unique experiences. I am the evidence of survival of people who have endured war, colonization by first the Chinese and then the French, US interventionism, and the legacy of Agent Orange. My life in America is the proof of my determination to flourish here, to make all the million-to-one chances that made my life worth it.

I grew up believing that, deep down, all the luck, karma, serendipitous chance, whatever you wanted to call it, I would or could ever have in the world had already been exhausted before I could say my name. A week before my first birthday, my future changed dramatically; instead of growing up in a state-run orphanage in a village outside of Hanoi, I—the product of an out-of-wedlock tryst—was adopted by a single, white American woman and whisked off to Massachusetts. From the beginning, my existence was a mistake. Illegitimate, a bastard, unclaimed, and living evidence that my birth mother had committed sin in a society that highly stigmatized single, unmarried mothers, and as a consequence, could not accept me.

I held onto my beliefs quietly, but intently, the way toddlers hide pretty pebbles in their pockets, the kind that have to be dug out of pants or they’ll rattle against the metal drum of the washing machine, proclaiming their presence. It was my secret that always evaded articulation, and I couldn’t bear the idea of anyone—especially my mom—unearthing them because I knew that in her hands those rocks would wound her terribly. For so long, I dreaded my friends meeting my mother: the confusion, the questions, the irrepressible anger in my voice, yes, this is my mother. I wasn’t ashamed of her, but of myself. We didn’t match and it was my fault. Eventually, I thought she would see that.

So I devoted myself to everything I did, subconsciously trying to prove not so much to my mother as to myself that I was worth it. I—out of all of the thousands of other children who needed parents—, I, who accrued such a great magnitude of bad and good luck before my first year of life—, I, who—for no other reason than mere chance—needed to make something of myself in order to make all the heartache, sacrifice, and effort worth it. Yes, perfectionism and ambition are at home in my personality, but it’s the fear of disappointing others that invited them across the threshold. It’s no longer a question of her unconditional love, but rather one of proving my own worth to myself, of understanding why I was given the opportunity for such a radically different life than the one I was born into, of the sense that the universe’s strange investment in me has paid off in some small way. I’ve always worked like I had something to prove and through my discomfort has come some success.

While my mother has always been a source of strength, wisdom, and love, I grew up hyperconscious of race, of normative notions of family, and of myself in the way that only an Asian-American child raised by a single, white, culturally Jewish mother can be. There was simply no way for my well-meaning white mother to foresee and prepare me for the ways my experiences would be profoundly different than hers. When I went to school, she told me to say please and thank you, and to make friends but not what to do when someone said What are you? or Why are you like that? to me.

Sometimes, I feel like my identity is a lie to the people around me. When asked my ethnicity, I pause. I may be 100% Vietnamese but Vietnam is both literally and culturally thousands of miles and a beleaguering journey across the ocean away. The Vietnam I find here is scrubbed, filtered, and altered: a story told only in American military uniforms and whispers of unspeakable violence colored Red by the Cold War. This Vietnam is more of a weapon than a homeland, ricocheting like self-shot-bullets through our national consciousness. It is difficult to reconcile these Vietnams; to build a bridge between my life here and to the country of my birth when all I have are signatures authorizing the transaction of a child in a language I cannot understand, or to quiet the lingering sense of failure. In Vietnam, I couldn’t pass for Vietnamese and here, I feel as though I can’t pass for American.

It is difficult to formulate any sense of belonging that is not in some way implicated by my adoption. Adoption is the fact of my existence unable to be forgotten. It is time zero and my world began then. For me, there has always seemed to be an ubiquitous sense of non-belonging, discomfort, and isolation not only within the broad expanse of the world, but also among my own family. It is the unease and hyperconsciousness that is normalized, borne out of being the only person of color in an all-white family, and amplified in the silence after my grandmother remarked across the room in front of my entire family that, finally, I didn’t look so foreign anymore. It can be profoundly isolating and—if you let it—it can teach you to the most insidious, self-destructive art in the world—to hate yourself.
But I have learned that being adopted does not negate my identity as a person of color and this happened, rather unexpectedly, largely through debate. When I began debate, I joined a world of competitive, smart kids ready to argue and eager to make a point at each other’s expense. There, in that highly-intense, competitive space I became exposed to different perspectives, schools of thought, and people who not only spoke of race and high-theory eloquently, but also proudly proclaimed their own identities’ –both personal and complicated, dominant and non-dominant—in front of complete strangers from all across the country. I learned that sometimes vulnerability is strength since accepting and learning to value oneself is the crux of empowerment. I learned that my identity, instead of being a detractor, only serves to make me more distinct from the other seven billion inhabitants of this world. I learned that being myself and accepting all of its implications is the most important, difficult, and ultimately, liberating action I could take.

We live in an insecure world fascinated with anyone with an ounce of self-confidence (the phenomena of celebrity-media-culture, for example). We live in a world that is only too eager to spit you back out for being too much of this or not enough of that. Too often, we—who are all fragile in some ways—participate in that pernicious culture even though the last thing anyone of us needs is the burden of self-hate. But if we can learn to accept the multiplicity of human experience outside of our own, and to recognize the courage of radical self-love in a hate-filled world, we will not only cheer each other onwards, but ourselves as well. This I believe.