Wow week 30 of #TWmemorymondays! Watch my instastories of my talking through my memory and also to watch me paint the piece.

Growing up up until junior high/high school, I had mostly Asian friends. My parents were close to other Chinese friends, and I was close to their kids naturally! Remember this thought process as a young girl. One family we knew had daughters that only spoke English even though their parents spoke Chinese. Another family we were close to had daughters who were fluent in both Chinese and English.

The kids that only spoke English seemed so cool to me - I really looked up to them. They wore cool clothes, had cool stuff, watched cool movies, and seemed so "American" to me. As a kid, I just wanted to be cool and to be accepted. Isn't that what every kid wants?

In the other family, the kids spoke fluent Chinese - in a really excellent way where they were familiar with Chinese colloquialisms and embodied the way of their parents (who were immigrants like my parents.) Then, they would talk to me in english with no accent and embodied a "normal" kid. The code switching was seamless.

Its interesting and sad now that I'm reflecting on it: as a kid, I aspired to be more like the first family's daughters, because they seemed cooler - because they were more "American." I put "American" in quotes, because how I defined "American" is how its wrongly defined in our white supremest society right now: being a true american means being white and not foreign. Speaking another language (unless its a european language), having an accent (unless its a european accent), presenting as anything but white is unamerican and totally not cool.

So I was spot on about how society sees immigrants and POC, and I didnt want to be associated with it. Crazy how much a kid absorbs from the unspoken values of society.
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#TWmemorymondays: A painting inspired by a memory every Monday of 2018. Connecting abstract art to real life. Week 30/53. 'Two' / 8x8 in / mixed media on paper