Renee Chen,
Mission Viejo, CA
As a first-generation Chinese American, I found it increasingly difficult to be accepted by both cultures as it seems that I don’t fit in as either Chinese or American; I’m either too “white-washed” by my relatives or “too Asian” by my peers when I was younger. And they base it by the way I dress to the way I speak.
There’s a lot of racial standards that we have to uphold such as being more intelligent than our peers and use academics as a competition – wherein natural selection, “survival of the fittest” for the best education resonates among many Asian families. The pressure and anxiety that comes from within is looked down upon – why am I not allowed to embrace it instead?
