I’m Just HAAPI to be Here: My End-of-APAHM Reflection

As the last few days of Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month (APAHM) approach us, I need to confess one thing: I haven’t really thought much about being Asian in a while. That is, until I recently attended a screening for HAAPI Meal, which is a docuseries on Asian American chefs and their stories.

I’ve been living in San Francisco for exactly two years now—one of the most densely Asian-populated cities in the United States–and never once did I fully unpack the baggage of a past identity crisis that I lugged from Phoenix all the way to here.

But there I was, mentally sorting it all out again as I listened to Chef Nico de Leon’s speak on his own cultural journey:

“I didn’t not identify with my culture, but it wasn’t my first identifier...The Pinoys at my school, we were all friends growing up, but we just didn’t relate other than being Filipino…[MY CULTURE] wasn’t something i was necessarily ashamed of, but i wasn’t necessarily proud.”

The last time I consistently thought about “being Asian” was in college. It started at 17 years old, awkward, impressionable and eager to get to college and let it mold me into someone cool. I was clearly still figuring myself out, so I played it safe and joined a community that I was already somewhat familiar with: a Filipino club. I was already familiar with the customs and I came from a pretty traditional immigrant home, so why not?

I quickly learned that there is a certain…energy that comes with being involved in student-led cultural orgs. It was a very intense experience. The enthusiasm in every meeting is always high, the determination to outdrink each other is even higher, and their members’ inner social dynamics were scandalous at worst, petty at best. Everything was dramatic and therefore exciting. And their events? It’s like a summer camp and a youth group had a baby on steroids and everything it did was about being Filipino. I ate it all up.

Friendship Games (FG), 2018.

Unlike Chef Nico, being Asian became my first (and for a while, only) identifier. It started when I attended my first Friendship Games in 2018. Every fall semester, Filipino college clubs all over California, Arizona, and Nevada hightail it to Cal State Fullerton for the weekend. For one entire day, they compete for an 8-foot tall trophy, the winning team determined by who exemplified the most S.P.U.F. (Spirit, Pride, Unity, and Friendship) through games and performances. It was overwhelming.

All this to say, FG showed me what I thought was the prime example of how an Asian American should show pride in their identity: exuberantly, homogeneously, and relentlessly. The more I got involved, I saw how we all had collectively bonded through the same internet memes and forums over and over again, poking fun at the personalities and interests of our peers. The best I can describe this phenomenon is that it’s one big diasporic inside joke that we can refer to as the “American” part of our shared Asian American experience. 

As someone who wasn’t part of a close-knit community before, it felt really nice to be included for once (even for how ridiculous it might be). I was still a blank canvas, and I had internalized these attitudes into my own social performance.

Then COVID-19 hit. I transferred universities and moved back home. All throughout 2020 and well into 2021, the nationwide trend in anti-AAPI hate crimes added a deeper level of trauma to our community during an already extremely isolating and anxiety-riddled time. Once the mask mandate was lifted and we returned to the classrooms two years later, it made sense why (primarily East and Southeast) Asian American young adults began to cling to each other a little more tightly. We sought out solidarity across our groups, and in the process we had revived a more vibrant, stronger sense of pride in our collective identity. I was one of those people.

Sent from the Phoenix Managing Editor making fun of me 4 years ago lol.

Shortly after lockdown, I became an intern-turned-president for my university’s Asian American student coalition. For a little over two years, I organized online and in-person events, advised 10+ cultural organizations, and guided a team of other students who were also determined to preserve the joy of our community, emboldened by the flames of adversity that we collectively faced barely one year ago. I received awards and gained a reputation that exceeded me. Needless to say, my self confidence soared to levels unimaginable to my freshman year self. The way I carried myself had fundamentally changed, and it clearly influenced the way I approached my personal relationships, schooling, and home life. 

In some convoluted way, I had not only subconsciously bought into the idea that being Asian American is a social performance, but had begun to associate it as my primary source of individual power. It enabled me to become the person I had always wished I could be: a leader. My myopic (mis)understanding of what being Asian American meant had served as the unstable yet foundational step that I tried to build the rest of my self worth on. 

And I literally looked this stressed out all the time!!

The dawn of my existential crisis arrived on the summer afternoon of a student-led Women’s March in 2021. It was three years after FG, and I had written and given my own speech on gendered and racial violence against AAPI women. At this point, I realized that I no longer had the luxury of being a passive member of a single cultural club; my thoughts were now consumed by everything relating to advocating, representing, and facilitating a sense of “Asian American pride” in my community. From the way I saw it, I couldn’t be a credible changemaker if my work only focused on the surface-level, “digestible” aspects of our culture. The Asian American experience is not all fun and food and dance and play; there is a darker underbelly to expose so that others can understand us better.

Except, I could now barely understand myself. I had to seriously reassess what Asian “pride” actually meant and looked like to me, and not what the behavior of others influenced me to believe. What exactly about being Asian American are we collectively proud of? Other than the heritage that prior generations have passed down to us, what are the greater values and issues that actually influence our shared experience in this country?

It wasn’t until I graduated college and removed myself from this impenetrable echo chamber of Asian American social life to understand this: I had fallen for the subconscious idea of Asians tokenizing their ethnicities as a way to both stand out and fit in American society. It was a problem that I couldn’t fix from the inside.

It’s a wildly complex, multi-layered topic that is rooted in a history revolving around immigration, civil rights, and the role our community plays in the social hierarchy of other racial groups. There is no single straightforward answer to explain why modern “Asian Americanism” is portrayed the way it is today (but if we’re being honest,TLDR; capitalism and white supremacy are the usual culprits to blame). 

The only thing I can do now is put the work into myself. Clearly, I’ve been procrastinating this self reflection for one reason or another - the postgrad reality of life hits hard and holds back on no one. It takes a lot of time to critically dissect dreams and ideas, which is time I don’t always have as an adult who is just trying to make ends meet. But still, I’ve made a lot of progress since then. I feel more secure in who I am now.

I don’t look down on the spaces where I spent so much time trying to find myself in, but to Chef Nico’s point, sometimes we have nothing in common as individuals despite our ethnicity, which is completely okay. We can’t rely on a shared heritage to completely bind us as genuine friends, lovers, and partners - and that’s what I wished someone told me from the start.

I haven’t thought about being Asian in a while - just not in that way.