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I Left The United States to Reclaim My Chinese Identity
The coronavirus pandemic exposed the sham of the ‘model minority’ myth
The “model minority” myth that supposedly privileges Asians in the United States compared to other social and ethnic minorities has been exposed for what it is: a sham of thinly veiled tolerance that fell apart at the hint of a threat. The coronavirus pandemic has effectively revealed what Asian Americans have always inherently known: We are the “other.”
I am from a country that considers the coronavirus Chinese — a country that I do not currently live in nor identify with enough to return.
My story of how I came to the United States starts with my parents. My mom came to the United States a month after the Tiananmen Square massacre in China and gave birth to me in New Haven, Connecticut. She divorced my father, a bold move for a young Chinese woman at the time, and moved us to Queens. We lived in a humble, working-class neighborhood in deep Queens, moving every few years to get closer to decent public elementary and middle schools. I learned from her that if we just put our heads down and worked, we would get our rewards: financial stability, economic mobility, and respect through proximity to Whiteness.
