You are Latina Enough (Except it's Asian)

What do REAL Asians talk about???

I sat across from the most gorgeous Asian the other day. Their hair was shaved to a short-cropped buzzcut, and they wore a septum ring, five times the size of my own. Not that size matters. And I wasn’t sure, then, if I wanted to be them, or if I wanted to date them, or if I wanted to be their bestfriend, or somehow all three all at once.

What I was sure was that I wanted, so badly, for this cool, queer Asian to notice me. I kept thinking, look up, look up, let’s be friends! I can fulfill your sense of diasporic restlessness, I can be your home away from home, I can cut you fruits or make you dumplings or whatever else Asians are meant to do to show you that I love you. And yes, I know I’m projecting a little bit; that maybe it’s me who needs you to be a home, needs you to validate my race, my broken Chinese, and to fulfil the vacuum left behind by the conservative ancestors that probably hate me. Be the interviewer to my Jenna Ortega: You are Latina enough, except it’s Asian.

Unfortunately, my train ride crush did not look up. And even if they had, they would’ve seen right through me. High femme, long hair, winged eyeliner; I look like I work in finance, or pre-med, or tech. Blech.

I look like I’d do well on Tinder. And, to be fair, I do. Men love to pay for my dinner and drinks, while serenading me with stories of all the anime they watch, or the time they went to Japan, or, wo ke yi shuo hen hao de zhong wen, ni ming bai ma?

Sometimes, out of boredom, I whip up a fake, Asian backstory. I’ll tell them I’m from Hong Kong, or Fujian, or Bali, none of which is true. The last date I went on, I told the guy that my real name is Ty Lee, and I’m from the city of Ba Sing Sai. (Luckily, he’s never seen Avatar).

But outside of this racial drag, I never know what to say. What do Asians talk about? Cuz, I mean, if you wanna hear about Asian shit, I can tell you about Asian shit. Like, I could tell you that Chinatown’s being gentrified, and its residents displaced. I could tell you how its youth activists were brutalized by the cops. But you don’t wanna hear all that, do you?

Maybe, I could tell you about the CPC, and how they’ve stolen 90 million dollars in wages from their Asian immigrant employees. This, despite claiming to be led by the quote-unquote “Chinese community”. But you don’t wanna hear that either.

I could tell you that Asian sex workers are being arrested, deported, and increasingly killed by Eric Adams’ police, and how those pigs keep raiding homes and separating found families. I could tell you about the lives that have been lost to state-sanctioned violence, or the manufactured poverty caused by manufactured scarcity. But you don’t wanna hear that either.

[Inhale]

Sorry, I don’t mean to get aggressive. I know it’s unbecoming. Asian girls aren’t meant to be aggressive; we’re meant to be quiet, soft spoken, demure. When we pursue activism, it’s meant to be about less depressing things: like, our right to get into Ivy Leagues, even when that’s at the cost of actual racial equity; or, the best way to cook rice; or, did you see those white folks claiming our right to bubble tea? Fuck that! Thank god for Simu Liu, activist king, motherfucking savior of the motherfucking oppressed.

And sorry, I don’t mean to get sarcastic. I know we’re not meant to be sarcastic. Y’all want us to be sweet and small and commodified, like the trinkets you brought home from Thailand when you thought you were Buddhist for a week.

You want us to spout shit like, Oh, that’s so zen, or, Your erection’s so good for the feng shui, or, Hen da, hen da, hen da!, but you get all weird when we say that we’re affected by racial capitalism too. And it’s so exhausting, to be this Cho Chang, Trixie Tang act, just so you can keep your hard-on standing.

So forgive me, if I get over excited when I see an Asian on the train, looking rad and queer and leftist, rejecting every convention of soft femmehood I’ve been too afraid to not adopt. Maybe if it was them on this stage, they’d say all the shit I wouldn’t, and maybe then, you’d hear it.

But since it’s just me tonight – high femme, long hair, winged eyeliner – I’ll focus on being pretty and tame, and let you go on with your evening.