Do you have any stories regarding your dual-heritage that have influenced your life?
I have a lot of love for both sides of my cultural heritage. I wrote my application essay to Yale about being a mix of two cultures and races, and how that would always be a very stable element of my identity. The essay helped me nail down an interview with my dream school, so that’s definitely positive.
On the negative side, I grew up in a predominately white city and I feel like that had a lot of negative impacts on the way I viewed myself, especially physically. I thought white girls were the epitome of beauty and always wondered why the boys I preferred didn’t prefer me. I’ve definitely grown out of that and started to realize that beauty is not only in the eye of the beholder, but also in diversity.
Is there a race that you identify with more than others?
I identify with both of my races equally. I feel like with all of the social movements that have been going on lately, I’ve been really vocal about my blackness, but I’m an Asian food connoisseur and I’m always reflecting on some of the Vietnamese traditions I learned about growing up.
I feel that it’s really important for me to identify with both races, otherwise people will try to disregard one. In high school, a lot of people felt like it was essential to split my cultural identity into two exclusive spheres and put me into whichever one fit the situation. Whenever I’d get the highest grade on an exam, everyone would attribute that to my “Asian side”, as if blackness and intelligence weren’t compatible. When I made varsity tennis, it was attributed to my black side. To be fair, my dad was a college tennis player and probably contributed to it, but my mom has also run a few half-marathons in the past.
When did you realize you were multiracial?
I realized I was mixed at a really young age. My dad was really insistent that my sister and I address ourselves as bi-racial, rather than mixed, but he never really revealed the logic behind that one. I remember being really competent about being bi-racial in sixth grade and adamantly explaining to all my classmates that my mom was in fact my “real mom” even though we weren’t the “same color.”