I was noticing a theme of an identity crisis this week.

It started out with the first documentary we watched about Asian women being portrayed in the media. They were either one of two women. 1.) the quiet Asian girl that would make the perfect wife. She would never argue with you because she never starts conflict. She’ll pamper you! She’ll wash you back in the tub AND have dinner ready when you get home. Or 2.) She was the evil dragon lady. She’s sneaky, she’s smart, she’s charming even. She’s not afraid to use her body to get what she wants and has no mercy about it.

That got me thinking a lot about the sinner and the saint complex that is ridiculously amplified in media aimed towards women. This constant need to be both, but only show the saint side. Women should appear to be innocent and modest but still sexy. Yet, if you come off as too modest you’re a prude. Too sexy? You’re a slut. You can’t win.

The Joy Luck Club had an identity crisis in the case that the younger generation of girls were fighting their mother’s demons. Yes, all the girls fought with their mothers and the mothers just didn’t understand their daughters. It’s still like battling two personalities, two different paths. Doing what makes you happy and doing what makes your mom happy. I don’t think parents always understand the influence that words unsaid can have on their children. All the girls seemed to be looking for some kind of reassurance from their moms and at the same time trying not to end up like them.

Saving face once again had the identity crisis of who you are and who your parents perceive  you to be. First off we have Wil who is gay. She knows she is gay, she isn’t questioning or bi, she’s a lesbian. Yet her mom still sets her up on dates with men in hopes that it’ll all magically change. THEN there was the mom who got pregnant by a guy that could be her son, and even thought she has feelings for him too she keeps him a secret. In both instances neither the mom or the daughter have done anything wrong by any means, but they still hide this because they know how their parents will react.

All of these kind of boiled down to never feeling 100% yourself. Always trying to be something else for someone else. Never feeling completely complete. Feeling like something is missing. I don’t think anyone fits into these perfect molds, no one is a complete sinner just like no one is a complete saint. There are layers to everyone, opinions. You might be completely black on one issue and totally white on another but it all equals out to a nice gray. We’re all just sades of gray.

On a side note can we just talk about the fact that Andrew McCarthy was in the Joy Luck Club! Don’t know who he is? He was Larry in Weekend at Bernie’s where he basically dragged his dead boss around a beach… He was also in a movie called Mannequin and he falls in love with a mannequin but who can really blame him when the mannequin in Kim Cattrall?

He was also in St. Elmo’s Fire and he totally stole Judd Nelson’s girlfriend in the movie.

And if you still don’t know him then he was also in PRETTY IN PINK!! He was Blane and he had a crush on Molly Ringwald’s character. He’s sweet but he’s kind of an asshole for choosing his friends over her…but that’s besides the point because this all leads back to…

LONG DUK DONG. Who was in Sixteen Candles that also starred Molly Ringwald and was also a John Hughes’ films like Pretty in Pink.

Yeah…connections

I’m writing this as I read so I don’t loose any good thought processes so bare with me.

“In such cases, white common laborers were sometimes called “white niggers’ and the work “white slavery.” In the post Civial War decades the problematic pre-abolition metaphors of “white slavery” and “wage slavery” gave way to ‘Nigger work” and “coolie work”" Pg. 57. This directly relates to my post about the N word. Do you see how rooted in hate this word is? Like they couldn’t think of another word for horrible working conditions so they just put the worst fucking word ever in front of it. If that doesn’t say something then I don’t know what does.

Side note on that “Twelve Hundred More” song. Someone recently told me that liking a song doesn’t make a difference. I think people underestimate the power of pop culture. I think that whether you like what’s happening in pop culture or not, it represents what happening at that space in time. You really think people were just singing the lyrics to this song blindly? You think this had no effect on the Chinese laborers?

I’m super into the fact that they’re being specific with the white group of men. I mean, I know I’m guilty of doing this but I totally lump white people together. Russian? German? Irish? It’s all white and that’s not cool. It’s cool that the white man is being specified…even if what he was doing was complete bullshit.

On page 77 there is a line where they are talking about one of the songs written against the Chinese (The Marriage of John Chinaman) and it says something about him ‘saving a lot of gold’ and I totally thought about How I Met Your Mother.

So that Pacific Railroad Complete thing? That picture of the white woman and the Chinese man? The cover for the damn book. Can I just…I mean… Why is it that no matter what minority is the new ‘threat’ people are always worried about the ‘white women’. Like seriously, if I was a white woman I would be so mad at the fact that people that I was that defenseless. Its insulting.

“The land itself was feminized in the metaphor of the virgin land, and the westward movement was imagined in terms of masculine penetration and conquest” Pg. 87. I don’t even know where to start on that one…wtf.

My friend Angelina and I always make a joke that she finds broken people. She finds people that have abusive fathers and low self esteem and she kind of just, mothers them? That might not be the right word I’m looking for, but you get the jist. Its literally like they just flock to her. I was talking to her one time and I told her that I was her only friend that wasn’t broken. Her face grew confused and she kind of just stared at me before she said, “Dude…your brother died when you were 8. You might be the most broken of them all.”

I’ve never seen myself as broken. I mean, I’ve been through some shit, who hasn’t? But I never really thought it broke me. Like she said, I was 8 when it happened. And it wasn’t like he was murdered or had some terrible disease. He was 12, and he got hit by a car on his way home from summer school. The end. And people always tell me that they’d never guess that I been through anything like that. Like I’m too happy to have had any hardship in my life.

I think that’s why I’m so happy.

I learned early on that life isn’t fair. That your entire world can turn upside down in the blink of an eye. And maybe part of the reason why I’m so happy is because I know that it can end at any moment. And if I’m being honest, I get scared when things go right for too long. At the same time though, I went through the worst thing I could possibly go through before puberty. I hit my lowest point when I was still in elementary school. And guess what, I made it! I mean seriously, how much worse can life get? The way I see it, life can only get better.

I guess I didn’t know I was different until my first day of Kindergarten.

Between the ages of 3 and 12, I lived in a white bread suburbia of Everett, Washington called Mill Creek. At the age of 5 I started at Silver Firs elementary and I was so excited because I got to go where my older siblings went everyday! I didn’t have to sit in the kitchen eating my cereal and watch them leave.

I remember standing in line with my mom and all the other kids were crying and I didn’t understand. Like, hello? Didn’t they know that THIS WAS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF THEIR LIVES!? Okay, I didn’t know that either but the point is that I was excited.

So I’m standing there and the teacher comes out to walk us to our classrooms and I totally left my mom and didn’t look back and I was all like, ‘yeah! toys and other kids!’ I remember she sat us on the carpet in a circle to go around and introduce ourselves and I remember looking around and noticing that no one else had skin like mine. And then it got even more weird when it was my turn and I said “Imani” and they all kind of stared at me like ‘what kind of name is Imani?’ Anyways, it was one of those things that kind of just stayed in back of my head until it was blatantly shoved in my face like…every single class photo taken. I was that random black spot in the front row.

Then in fifth grade a boy called me and my friends (a girl who was half black, half white and another girl who was literally from Africa) the N word. And I was so taken a back it was honestly all a blur. It was like..he said it, then we all stared at him and asked him to repeat himself and he said it again! Then next thing I know I’m throwing his shoe across the street and my friend is chasing him downhill on his bike. And then we all got in trouble for fighting and got detention but nothing happened to him.

I moved to Bellingham (another white bread town) when I was 12 and ONCE AGAIN I was 1 of like, 15 black kids, tops in the whole middle school. And people started calling me Denzel because my last name is Washington and a kid asked me to explain a 50 cent song to him. Which is ridiculous because I was obsessed with Blink 182 back then… but people didn’t see that. They just saw my skin.

So to the public I was just this black girl. But my family saw me differently. I’d say I was the black sheep but that’d be wrong. I was the ‘white sheep’ in a herd of black sheep (get it). I was weird because I’d rather read a book than watch TV. I wanted to learn how to snowboard so I was ‘white’. I owned a long board so I was ‘white’. I listened to more Sublime than rap so I was ‘white’. It was like in the movie when Ben gets called a coconut. I had that too except for people like me, we’re ‘oreos’.

I get what its like to feel out of place everywhere you go.

It’s weird and confusing. Like to yourself…you’re just you. You’re skin color doesn’t define you. I could describe myself with ten different words and not list ‘black’ once. It isn’t the most important thing about me. It isn’t the only thing about me. Yeah, I’m black and I’m so proud to be! I come from a culture of struggle and determination. How can I not be proud to sport this ebony skin? But I’m more than that. I’m an author. I’m an animal lover. I’m not a morning person. I’m funny. I’m a sister. A daughter. And aunt. A college student. I’m struggling. But I’m grateful.

I’m Imani Kashala Shanyce Washington.