After my first Chinese lesson as an adult, I called my Grandma to tell her what I had learned. I speak my mother’s language — the language of the country I was born in and the language of the country I live in now — but I have never been able to properly learn Chinese, despite being half Chinese myself. My inability to speak Chinese has made me feel like I’m bad at being Asian.
-
-
A Hāfu in Japan
Two passports. Two last names. Two identities. From a very early age, my life has been characterized by how I am half-American and half-Japanese. In elementary school, my mom tried to teach me Japanese by putting me in a “Japanese as a Second Language School (JASL)” on Sundays. Being a child, of course, I was very averse to going to more school on the weekend.
