I grew up nurtured by carpets of pine and soft drizzle,
cradled by mountains with snowmelt bubbled through by activism
I walked streets murmuring with the vintage days of Japanese-Americans stowing
baggage in the Panama Hotel, hoping to return one day from concentration camps
Streets filled with such thick aromas of dimsum, hot pot, and barbequed pork hanging up in windows that I almost had to swim through them.
The Pacific Northwest.
So I assumed everybody would be like us,
all infused with cultures from the broth of the Great Melting Pot.

But then I headed down south to the land of the pines and I
Thumbed my way into North Caroline
Where milkshakes come in fifty-five different flavors
Where salmon and mint were no longer expensive appetizers but shades in a wardrobe
vineyard vines not redundantly named plants but a dress code
And cabs are filled with the stench of Saturday Shooters and
students priced at two dollars a head,
packed almost as tightly as a subway in my parent’s homeland at rush hour
But unlike in my homeland, I became a novelty.

Because even though they said, “You are surrounded by diversity”
As defined in the dictionary
dictated by mission statements
Welcome to college where we pride ourselves on
Peers of different backgrounds, where we are committed
Remember those glamorous pamphlets with glossy promises?

But diversity is more than just a bureaucratic stamp of approval
Because even though one out of five people you walk by every day
Has eyes the shape of almonds, skin the color of olives, and hair the shade of some dark exotic food that you can’t pronounce
And I am part of that one slice in the demographic pie chart
Diversity does not exclude segregation

So, I became the token, the subject of patronizing asides,
They say, “Asians always…well, not you, but them, don’t worry, you’re not like them”

I became whitewashed, as they say, washed clean of my heritage character by character,
Finding myself losing a word for every day I didn’t eat out of the family rice cooker, for every time I didn’t hear my grandmother talking on the phone in the only way she knows, shouting into the speaker, for
every time I didn’t teach my grandfather a phrase in English,
Washed until I almost believed I was not like them.

Washed until I was reduced to a fun icebreaker fact:
“Hi, my name is Angela and I’ve
eaten every organ of an animal”
A statement filled with promises of the heady streets of Beijing and Shanghai
Yi kuai yi kuai, kuai mai kuai mai le!
China in a sizzling savoring of scorpions sautéed alive
A statement stripped of context and turned into a did-you-know

But I will not be penned into a hole that is made for fowl
And I am more than just a yellow slice of the diversity pie

I want to be a doctor for the med after the pre
Not for torque on tops and the tops of water curving into meniscus smiles
Or for the reactions between carbons and chlorines but for
The reactions of my future patients as I try to change, not the world, but the people in mine

I play the violin
Not to be another single-syllable last name on the program
But because I can’t kick my addiction to the sweet sting
of muscle memories in my fingers urged until the strings are imprinted on my skin for hours
buoyed by staccatos, pizzicatos, and pianissimos to the hushed silence between the echoes of the final note and the collective inhale of the audience after they forgot to breathe.

They say the glass ceiling still exists but at least we can chip
Away at the glass until it’s brittle enough one day to shatter.

And I yearn to do the same to the bamboo ceiling
Snap it right in half but damn that plant pushes right back
so resilient that no matter how hard
I try to repay my parents who lived off of 400 dollars a month
Whose feet ached from standing at Kinko’s photocopying every page of their textbooks because buying them would cost ten pennies more
Who clutched each other during Christmas and cried because they felt so
Alone in a city of millions

Bamboo bends so much that no matter how much my grandfather tells me that
I’m the first person in the family to come so far
That he waits for the day to inscribe me into the family scrolls
In some village that I will never visit
I still have to score two hundred points higher on the SAT
To be given an equal chance.

I pursued higher education.
The word here is “higher”, as in
Assume higher of me than the color of my skin.

They say beauty is only skin deep
But what about identity?