Intersections and My Mental Health as an Asian American
Sandy Nguyen
I am Asian American.
Sometimes I feel inherently complicated.
I am palatable. The acceptable person of color.
Light skinned and educated, “well-spoken”,
benefiting from yet burdened by the model minority myth.
A myth that presents my body
as soft, submissive, silent, never causing conflict
and allows white supremacy to pit my body
against those who are more oppressed than me.
A myth that stifles my attempts to name injustices that I face
because people already have expectations
of how I am supposed to speak, look, and behave.
I am inter-generational trauma.
Lucky to have not experienced war and its aftermath,
of famine, disease, and violence the way my family and ancestors did,
but still subject to poverty, unchecked rage, PTSD, deep wounds, regrets,
tiger parenting, unrealistic expectations, family obligations,
and learned toxic and hurtful behavior,
that bleed into each generation.
That taught me to shrink and silence myself
if someone is louder or angrier than I am.
I am Vietnamese American.
Pulled between two cultures and communities,
wondering if and when I will be accepted and by who.
My history has never been taught in a classroom.
My Anglo first name is a reminder of my parents’ shame and trauma,
preserving and protecting my identity
with my Vietnamese middle and last name
in hopes that I won’t be hurt the same way they were
when they came to this country
as people stumbled over the foreign sounds of our names,
caricatured our accents,
mocking instead of understanding.
I am bilingual.
Under a magnifying glass,
Raised speaking my mother tongue, fluent but still learning.
Being asked if I’m Vietnamese enough
to speak the language of my people
while growing up in a place
where my English is always criticized
by white monolingual English speakers
and enduring a system that suppressed
the potential to develop my family’s language
and only wanted me to speak a colonizer’s language.
I am partial.
Othered by white supremacist systems,
seen as too foreign,
tokenized by predominantly white institutions,
but rejected,
seen as whitewashed
and Americanized
by the people I call home.
I am culture.
Dual identities.
My culture is profitable but rarely appreciated.
It is ridiculed, appropriated, disrespected, and hidden,
yet thriving in a world that does not want all of me.
I am celebrating holidays
honoring traditions
flaunting my áo dài
basking in the practices that were taught to me by my mother
from her mother and her mother’s mother
and that persisted despite years
of colonization, violence, and erasure.
I am a child of immigrants and refugees.
I cannot truly empathize.
I downplay my struggles
in comparison with the pain my family endured.
But I see and I feel
the burning rage
my parents feel,
as they are told to go back to their countries.
To speak English like an American.
To always be seen as foreign.
To understand hunger
coming from a land where food was scarce.
Forced to grow up at a young age.
Escape to a new country with nothing in their possessions
while still holding love and pride for their home country
and raising children, raising me, with those lived experiences.
I am envious
of children who grow up with their parents in the home
as mine traveled for underpaid work
while my grandparents raised me.
I am on a seesaw between what provides me with personal fulfillment
and what will provide my family with a sustainable life.
What I may sacrifice, what I have to compensate for my parents’ losses,
after seeing what was sacrificed for me.
I have grown up with the mentality
that over-achievement and success
at the expense of my mental well-being
is an expectation and a cultural norm.
I am chronic and mental illness.
I am layers of illnesses, bad days, and trauma.
I feel some traumas are so ingrained
it almost seems unfixable, unmanageable.
I was not taught strategies for healthy coping
since my parents were struggling with their own trauma.
I have trouble expressing and placing my mental health issues
at the top of my personal wellness hierarchy.
I am ashamed of the unfamiliar and unseen.
I cannot count the moments where I sat in silence, alone,
while frustration and words I couldn’t say
or translate out loud
simmer inside of me, suppressed.
My physical, internal, and mental illnesses
are in an endless battle.
I cannot choose one method of healing.
Relying on both traditional family recipes and Western medicine,
while stigmatized by my communities for not being “strong enough”
to beat
pray
or hope
my mental illnesses out of my body.
I am a statistic.
Discovering inclusive mental health resources as an adult
even though I needed it most in my youth
when dealing with depression and self-harm.
I am queer. I am a secret.
I am a woman.
Generations of women before me were treated
as a commodity rather than a people.
Yellow fever is supposed to be a compliment.
I can’t be in an interracial relationship
without being stereotyped by others.
I am constantly fighting through power structures and violence.
Hypersexualized by men I have never met,
infantilized by peers,
constantly silenced
for expressing ideas that are “too liberal”
too loud, too annoying,
but condemned for not being assertive enough
in spaces full of white and male voices
and in two cultures where the patriarchy is a pervasive threat
to my existence and independence.
But I am taking back my narrative. All of them.
And I must remind myself that I am not a monolith.
My mental health is not a monolith.
My mental health journey has made me malleable and resilient.
I am persistent.
I name my oppressions,
I name the abuse I experienced.
I name the trauma and internalized racism within myself
and within my family.
I name injustice.
I name toxic, problematic, and self-destructive behavior.
I identify how my privileges
are leveraged against those more oppressed than I.
I move in fluid motions between two cultures
and claim the values that serve my mental health.
I continue to explore my roots.
I celebrate my identities.
I speak to myself with kind words. I have open conversations.
I try to forgive myself.
I refuse to let others define my worth and identity as an Asian American.
I make choices that may not align with my family’s beliefs.
I appreciate everything my family has done for themselves,
and for me, while still wishing they made different decisions.
I am a multitude of diasporic and diverse experiences.
I happily correct people when they mispronounce my name.
I don’t spend extra energy on those who will not try.
I make small actions, internally and externally,
to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma
no matter how slow or painful it may be.
I protect my peace.
I understand when I need community care
to avoid the resentment that builds when I shoulder my pain alone.
I am starting to understand boundaries with myself
and others who may cause me harm.
I cry and mourn for what I lost in my youth,
while reconnecting with my inner child.
I remind myself that as an adult
it’s never too late to work on my mental health.
I seek resources. I make mistakes.
I no longer feel that I must be liked and appease others
in order to be seen and heard.
I understand that I can be proud of my accomplishments,
but I don’t need to be an exceptional Asian hustler
in order to be validated.
I let myself be angry and feel my feelings in full
even if it doesn’t look the same as others.
I wonder if my deepest wounds will ever heal
or be articulated the way I want.
But I am discovering liberation through generational strength and healing.
I practice gratitude for things in my control.
I physically, verbally, and explicitly claim my space in spaces
not originally made for me.