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All this is too familiar. For two decades, before wearing several sizes of clothes, I was still wearing a leotard as a regular dancer in a nightclub in San Francisco. My friends thought I had the confidence to dance in the cage once a week, but the fact was the opposite. Due to my comprehensive characteristics, after being called ugly and “hybrid” in school for many years, dancing became a way for me to resist and control others’ perceptions of me, just like when Annie changed.
It sounds like a bad 1980s comedy, very aging, my blond hair, midwestern father married my mother, and my mother is a mail order bride from the Philippines. The two families are culturally and politically opposed, and both my parents are struggling financially. Therefore, my grandmother became my main caregiver when I was 6 years old, and I lived with her in Kansas for half of my childhood until she passed away at 14.
After my grandmother passed away, my father’s family no longer kept in touch. Like An’s. I have moved to New York as an adult, and there has been no news from them for ten years. On the first Thanksgiving Day in the city, I went to a restaurant and poked the gelatinous cranberry hockey puck while hoping that someone would call me home. As if it was fate, I received a random call from my aunt on my father’s side. She said that she has been reflecting on life and learned from her mother that I did not know anyone when I moved to New York. She said that she spent many days thinking about the family who hadn’t spoken to me for so long, and regretted that I lived alone at the Big Apple and that she wanted me to be reunited with my family.Not say a word racism, She apologized for “the treatment of my family”.
This is not a perfect apology, but for me, it means a lot to me that a person of nearly a century can humbly admit his mistakes. I packed up for a trip to Kansas, and I was curious to see the white noodles of my family again. Soon, I sat in a taxi at the airport and went to a chain hotel in Overland Park.
When I entered the hotel, my white relative stretched out his hand excitedly. When they started talking to me slowly, I was taken aback. Their opening mouths were like speaking to a deaf-mute foreigner.
“Will. You. Concern. For. Some. Stir. Fry?” a long-lost cousin asked. I am confused. I was born in the United States. I have never lived abroad, and I have never heard of a language other than English. This is true when other students think that Annie is American. In fact, Annie is also Japanese.
“Oh, I really don’t like frying,” I said with a polite smile. “I remember when I lived at my grandma’s house, the best hamburgers and fries came from the Midwest. So I wanted a burger with all the fixin.” I would be happy to add some local languages, hope they can understand that I am an American. And it’s not exotic at all.
We ended up in a typical bar and grill, which was exactly what I wanted. When we ate together, I eliminated questions such as “Do you live in a community with other Filipinos?” I feel disarmed, not sure how to respond.
At the end of dinner, I finally had the answer. A cousin suddenly said loudly without warning: “I feel sorry for the mixed-race children, they shouldn’t be born. They will never know their true identity or identity, because parents determine the degree. Live a night of selfish passion.”
The entire table is quiet. I thought about how I lived alone in New York with little contact with my family without help, and how I came out at a very young age and survived without their support.
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