Taiwanese-American Parents Have Shaped My Life

My mother would always tell me how beautiful I was. I never believed her.
Growing up in America with Taiwanese-American parents has shaped my life and my personality. In Georgia there are very few areas with Taiwanese influences and culture. As a result, when my sister and I were younger, we went to school in an area where there were not many Asian families residing. As a young girl I wanted to be beautiful and accepted. I did not want to be Taiwanese. I wanted to be “American”. Most of my peers were white and, sadly, even as a child, I felt different from and sometimes inferior to them. I thought that in order to be a beautiful American like my friends, I had to be a pretty white girl with golden-blonde hair, ocean blue eyes and sun kissed skin. Eventually I started to despise my frizzy black hair, deep brown almond shaped eyes, and yellow skin. …show more content…
I remember one specific incident in elementary school. During class the teacher asked me and the other students what our favorite possession was; I said my favorite thing was my dog. Another student blurted out, "Yeah, right! You are probably going to eat it." The whole class chuckled along with the teacher and I don’t remember anything more after that. This was not the single determining incident that resulted in my low self-confidence, but a specific incident that I remember. Because I was eight years old, I did not recognize at the time that what happened to me was a product of racism. As a young adult now, I understand what happened and I can easily brush it off because that is what comes with being of a different race; at the time, the student's remark really hurt and offended me. I felt less than all of my classmates and my self-esteem was