in vietnamese, mỹ trắng means white american.
growing up, i thought it meant american because
we weren’t american.
americans don’t eat what we ate.
the dining table was filled with an array of foods and rich smells.
different meats and soups left no space for the imagination and
at the center, there was always a huge bowl of rice, still steaming and freshly cooked.
the only thing that was missing were people to eat the meal.
i sat at the table alone as a child, waiting for someone to come.
mẹ and ba didn’t work a 9 to 5 like other parents
and spent most nights away, somewhere.
as i watched the steam begin to disappear into nothing from the huge bowl of rice,
i wondered if the steam was similar to my family’s relationships.
slowly disappearing into nothing because
americans aren’t alone.
americans didn’t work the jobs we worked.
ba and mẹ spent their days polishing nails and painting them pretty colors.
they spent their time giving other luxuries that they couldn’t buy themselves.
with their knees sore and hands blistered, i felt shame rise in my stomach.
i tried to release the nausea by saying something- anything.
so i said that they did something “important”.
in my childish head, important meant the lady in a white jacket that i saw once a year or
the man in bulky suits with large cases to match them.
in contrast, my mom could always be seen with fancy dresses that came from fake materials while my dad wore whatever money could buy in that moment.
i lied about my parent’s occupation because americans are important and
americans don’t wear cheap clothes.
americans didn’t look like us.
as a child, i viewed america like a blank piece of paper,
ready to be written on and filled with ideas and possibilities.
america is like a blank piece of paper because it is white.
only on a white background could someone be american,
and we weren’t white.
my paper, my canvas, was an ugly de-morphed color that had no potential.
i wasn’t meant to become anything but the blank canvas with splotches of beige brown and any color but white.
i spent my childhoods stuck reading and looking at the white papers that surrounded me.
reading about what americans would become, but not being possible of the dream myself.
at some point, i finally understood the words between the splotches of color on the canvas that was me even if
americans aren’t asian.
sometimes i wonder whether there is a true distinction between mỹ and trắng.
there was always a correlation between the two in my head, unable to be erased.
as my lips pushed against each other to make the first syllable, i found my teeth vibrating in unison.
america and white felt as correlated as the rice and meats i ate,
they were polished and perfect like the designs my parents hunched over tables to create,
and these facts ring in my head as i flip through the pages of my history books.
in vietnamese, trắng means white.
in english, white is only a shade that lives amongst the bursts of color in the world.
the white clouds were only scenery compared to the blue sky and yellow sun that illuminated the clouds.
my eyes were always a black shade that only turned a chocolate brown in a reflection, not the white shade that surrounded my pupils.
americans may be white, but i somehow felt like the shade under their color.
maybe the issue wasn’t the lack of mỹ in myself but the lack of myself in trắng.
maybe, i’ll get to be american.
Editors: Luna Y., Alisha B.
Image: Unsplash