The In-Between World

By Alice Feng

“I guess [the airport is] the only place I didn’t 
have to explain anything. Everyone was 
in-between.”
— Eddie Huang, Fresh Off the Boat

In Fresh Off the Boat, Eddie Huang writes about his life and hardships as an Asian American who feels neither fully “Asian” nor fully “American.” Wandering around the airport, he feels a relief that he doesn’t have to explain himself to anyone, whether that “anyone” be from Taiwan or Florida. Huang's struggle affects Asian Americans, as well as anyone growing up with two cultures. As an Asian American, I too find myself relating to some of his challenges. As an Asian American who loves so many aspects of Chinese culture from music to clothing to food to TV series. As an Asian American who lives in a community mostly made up of Asians - especially Chinese - people where everywhere I turn is some Chinese restaurant or grocery store or school. Even though my life differs greatly from Huang’s life, who grew up in a predominantly Caucasian and African American community and who loves hip-hop and basketball, I still find myself asking the question of “where do I fit in society?” 

Living between two cultures and his own personality forms the central conflict of Huang’s narrative. Early on, Huang is bullied for being Chinese, which might have made any child want to bury their Asian background. His schoolmates call him and his brothers “chinks” and various other slurs and announce that his Chinese food was “stinky,” an insult which I too have experienced. Many of his peers’ parents also display a lack of education about Asian culture, even using the outdated colonialist term “Oriental,” and ask where Eddie’s family was really “from.” 

With new forms of racism such as the Fox Eye trend, the scapegoating of Asians for the coronavirus, and the ever-pervasive Model Minority Myth, the situation has failed to improve since when Eddie was a child. Eddie himself also doesn’t feel like he is fully American. Despite being a citizen and born and raised in America, he talks about how he’ll never “hold an American flag, own a USA bumper sticker, or rock a Dream Team jersey that doesn’t say Barkley.” Eddie also says, 

“If they did try to see me as one of “them” it wasn’t in my true form; it was as a reformed, assimilated, apologetic version of myself that accepted the premise that my people were barbarians”Belonging for Huang comes at the cost of sacrificing and apologizing for his own identity and assimilating to the American culture. 
While assimilation rings false to Huang, he also fails to identify with the Asian community. When arguing with his father over his wish to become an ESPN sportscaster, he realizes, 
​
““not only was I not white, to many people I wasn’t Asian either.””

Evidently, in Huang’s case, this is because he is a “loud-mouthed, brash, broken Asian who had no respect for authority in any form.” However, this feeling of not fitting in with the Asian community applies to many Asian Americans who may not be as loud-mouthed, brash, or outspoken as he is. I, for instance, wouldn’t consider myself as vocal or as blunt as Eddie (in fact I usually pass as a stereotypical “well-mannered” Chinese girl at first glance), yet there are still many ways I’m unable to fully assimilate with societies in Asia. My observations come from a mixture of my parents’ story of China, Chinese media, American media on China, and my first-hand experience of going to China and visiting both my older and younger relatives there. Of course, the most direct barrier between me and my family and friends in China is language; despite speaking mostly Chinese at home, I lack experience with modern Chinese slang and traditional idiom usage, pop culture references, and speed of speech. 

Photo obtained via: https://www.fabiaoqing.com/biaoqing/detail/id/572985.html

Then, there are the deeper fundamental differences that even studying the culture and history cannot change because of how I have grown up in the United States. Chinese (and perhaps this can be generalized to Asian) people have a centuries long tradition of a preference for collectivism over individualism. Chinese families tend to promote the idea of being like everyone else and for putting family and society over oneself. America, on the other hand, tends to promote being unique and individualistic. 

This clash between collectivism and individualism has several implications. First, people in China are more likely than people in the United States to follow orders from the government which has no inherently positive or negative implication until we look at specific cases. For a more positive implication, we can look at the example of the Covid-19 pandemic. In China, the government ordered citizens to wear a mask and follow extremely strict contact tracing rules, and most people rigorously followed the rules. Now the pandemic has died down so much that large parties are once again happening in Wuhan with no drastically negative impact. In the United States, however, people will first debate about the implications of wearing a mask because the government ordered it. Perhaps they may reach the conclusion that wearing a mask limits their freedom, privacy, and comfort, and as a result, they end up not wearing one and spreading the coronavirus to others and maybe even dying themselves. It’s truly sad to regularly see examples on the news of someone infected with the coronavirus because they were not wearing PPE or were in an area with poor social distancing.

For a more negative implication, we can look at the idea of discussion. In Chinese schools, discussion is, for the most part, not encouraged, and neither is talking in class or questioning teachers and authorities. On the other hand, many American schools encourage debates, round table discussion, asking questions, and the like. This discouragement of discussion in China extends to outside of the classroom where discussion of many topics such as homosexual relationships, time travel (as to not disrespect history), ghosts/monsters, and subversive behavior are highly suppressed. People also criticize the government and talk about “controversial” topics much less openly in China than in the United States partly out of fear of consequences, partly because of what has been instilled in them by tradition and society. Now again, the reason I went into such detail on these differences between China and the United States is to show how fundamentally different these two places are, and as a result, the reason why it’s difficult for someone growing up in the United States to fit in in China (or Asia), and vice versa.

Of course Asian Americans need not fit in with either Asians or Americans; they have their own Asian American community. (Indeed, there never really is a need to fit in with any group, regardless of one’s background, but it may be more comforting to some to have a group of people who look like them, have the same interests as them, have grown up in the same situation as them, etc.) However, Huang makes the point that many Chinese Americans either resent their Chinese background or compete to be more “Chinese” (i.e. who has more love for Chinese food, more points on the SAT, more instruments they have mastered, more AP courses under their belt), both of which make it difficult to form a united community.
​ 
At the end of the day though, Huang and most children of American immigrants are proud of their ethnicity and wouldn’t choose to live as any other ethnicity. As Eddie says, 
“What they didn’t understand is that after you have the money and degrees, you can’t buy your identity back. I wasn’t worried about degrees, but I cared about my roots.”

An identity is something that everyone values. Just like the airport is a world of in-between, so is living as an Asian American (or any other mix of cultures or races). As an Asian American, you grow up in between two cultures, each with its own language, food, pop culture, history, and people, and you are entitled to both cultures. You’re able to communicate with “twice” the number of people and can act almost as an ambassador between the two cultures, as you most likely have some understanding of both. By being an Asian American, you create your own unique identity, and this identity really demonstrates a redefinition of culture in the 21st century, a time of social activism and change -- especially by the younger generations. Asian Americans are also realizing that they can boldly define their own Asian American identity without necessarily undermining their Asian and American cultures. They are learning both that there is no shame in embracing their Asian heritage while also not being afraid to take on the American culture, a culture completely untouched by their ancestors. Today, as more and more Asians immigrate to the United States and the Asian American population, one of the fast-growing racial or ethnic groups in the United States, rises in numbers, the Asian American identity takes a shape clearer than ever before. 

This is Eddie Huang, author of Fresh Off the Boat. Image courtesy of ABC/Image Group LA via Flickr, creative commons license.

Although Huang faces a variety of difficulties stemming from his Asian American identity, the story really is about him creating a place for himself in this world, something that many readers can personally relate to while reading his memoir. 
about the author: Alice loves reading mystery, historical fiction, and dystopian stories as well as stories inspired by current events and issues that reveal a life different from that of the reader’s yet still takes place in the same world or maybe even same country. Other hobbies of Alice’s include figure skating, watching Chinese drama, and designing, creating, and selling unique handmade bracelets.