An Overpriced Coffee Shop and Me
BY ERICA WONG @ericawongg
Erica Wong (she/her) is a proud Chinese American and a second-year student at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is double majoring in Communication and Sociology, with interests in environmentalism and intersectional activism. In her free time, you can find her practicing yoga, hiking, making new playlists, trying new recipes, and spending time outdoors!
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or the first 18 years of my life, I grew up in rural Maryland, about an hour away from the Washington D.C. neighborhood where my great-grandparents settled once they immigrated to the United States. Building a new home in our nation’s capital, my great-grandmother opened a laundromat in the city’s Chinatown. This tiny shop, nestled on the corner of Massachusetts Avenue, was where my grandmother later worked, where my father grew up, and where gentrification has recently turned the building into an overpriced coffee shop. Four generations later, I see myself in the renovated building that once harbored the foundations of my Chinese American heritage. Growing up, I never saw my father’s side of the family as traditionally Chinese. My grandmother’s favorite foods are tomato-and-cheese sandwiches and cherry pie. Her native tongue is English, and her
D.C. accent comes out every time she pronounces “Washington” as “Warshington.” My father, punished in elementary school for speaking what little Toisan he picked up at home, now only knows English. He watches football on Sundays and listens to country music on the radio during car rides.
“What remains a century after my great-grandparents crossed the ocean to come to America lies within me, the product of four generations of cultural shame and assimilation.” Being socialized in a conventionally “American” way, I unknowingly rejected my own culture from a young
age. Looking back, it is painful to see the intricate layers of my identity that I had shed to prove my American-ness to those around me. Sitting in the cafeteria in the sixth grade, I decided from then on to make myself peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day for lunch instead of risking my peers calling my Chinese food “weird.” Staring intently at my face in the mirror, I decided that my nose was too flat and round to be pretty, nothing like the slim, upturned noses of my blond-haired, blue-eyed friends. Sitting in the backseat of my mother’s car, I decided I no longer wanted to attend Chinese school in fear of being seen as one of those Asian kids. I was conditioned into being ashamed of my heritage and family history. Instead I assimilated into white American culture to feel able to succeed in this country—the same country that whitewash-
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