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Everything’s in a Name
by Annie Yang
I lived in Beijing, China from birth until my family moved to America four
years later. In China, my preschool class consisted of twenty Chinese kids, but
when I entered kindergarten at Northwood Elementary School in Ames, Iowa, I
became the oddball, the only Asian kid in a class with twenty-five white kids.
Every student and grown-up at school was white: all the teachers, the
principal, the librarian, and the school nurse. With the exception of my dad’s
Chinese friends and their kids, every kid and grown-up I knew was white. At the
time, neither my classmates nor I recognized the differences in our skin color.
Our thoughts revolved around the day’s lunch menu and the class hamster.
Though I didn’t acknowledge race boundaries at the time, I understood that some
obvious differences existed between my white friends and me. In those days, all
the cool kids brought lunch to school, whether in a brown paper sack or in a
Disney lunch box. I never brought lunch to school because my parents never
bought bread or lunchmeat; if I wanted to bring lunch, my mom would spoon
leftover fried rice into a Tupperware container and place it in a plastic Cub
Foods bag. During field trips, the teachers required all students to bring
their lunches, so my dad would buy me half a dozen donuts and a bottle of
water. Embarrassment oozed from the pores of my tomato red face as I opened my
Dunkin’ Donuts bag and bit into the first glazed donut. Meanwhile, my peers
unveiled their diagonally cut peanut butter and Wonder Bread sandwiches, Fruit
Roll-Ups, and juice boxes. As I started to realize such differences, shame of
my heritage crept in, and I longed to blend in with my white peers.
*
When I was in second grade, my parents and I moved to Fort Lee, New Jersey.
During the eighteen hours in the U-Haul truck, I imagined my new school and new
life in New Jersey. I realized that my success in emulating the white kids would
involve complete assimilation, including adopting an American name. My Chinese
name, Yin Yin, always stood out in the lists of Michelles and Erics. I had the
same Cinderella backpack as my white friends, played the same games of Tag and
Candyland, and read the same Berenstain Bears books. My blatantly foreign name
was the only thing that differentiated me from my white peers. I searched for
options in my dictionary’s list of names and fell in love with the name Alicia.
Alicia could make me the true American I aspired to be. Looking in the mirror, I
saw Alicia in my lopsided ponytail, chubby cheeks, and crooked smile.
I discussed my name change with my mom, who agreed that having an American name
could help me blend in. When we arrived in Fort Lee, I was ready to leave Yin
Yin behind and become Alicia.
Soon after settling in to the new apartment, my mom took me to register for
school at the regional office. We followed some lady into her office and sat
down in brown cushy chairs opposite her huge wooden desk. She peered over her
glasses at me, her eyes scanning me from head to toe and back again before she
handed my mom a stack of colored forms.
My mom started scratching away on the clipboard. The harsh sound of the pen
against the board competed with the loud click-clacks of the typewriter in the
office next door. The lady sat at the desk in her blue suit with her tight
ponytail as she rifled through some files. My mom paused in the middle of one
form, furrowed her brow, and said, “She wants to change her name to Alicia. Can
we do that?”
“Aw, really? That’s too bad. Alicia?” the lady asked, her face dripping with
disappointment. Horrified, I felt as if someone had knocked the wind out of me,
and I could already feel the hot tears searing the corners of my eyes. Had I
made the wrong decision? Was Alicia a bad name? Were Alicias the girls with
head lice who sat by the wall reading chapter books during recess? Maybe I
needed to do more research. Then, as quickly as the wrinkles and drooping lines
had formed, the lady’s face instantly returned to normal as she replied with a
smile, “Sure, just tell the teacher.”
“Oh, that easy?” my mom asked.
“Yup.”
My mom continued filling out the forms and chit-chatting with the lady in her
broken English for several more minutes. When she finished, we prepared to
leave the office.
The lady walked us to the door. “Welcome to Fort Lee…Alicia,” she uttered in a
sad voice. Then, suddenly, a huge smile and, “Bye, Yin Yin.”
“Bye,” my voice trailed off as my mom led me out of the office. My mind was a
pile of confusion and mush. Didn’t white people like white names? Why wouldn’t
they like Alicia?
“So you still want to be Alicia?” my mom said, interrupting my near
hyperventilation.
“I don’t know anymore!” I pouted with a frown and bunched-up eyebrows.
“Well, you should know for sure.”
“I know, Mom,” I muttered, stomping my feet on the pavement and wiping my tears
on my sleeve.
I spent the remainder of the day agonizing over my name change. Did I really
want to be Alicia? Maybe not, especially if people were going to look at me
with that sad face when they discovered Alicia wasn’t my real name. I would
have to keep Yin Yin a secret to avoid the sad face.
My indecision persisted for days. When the first day of school rolled around, I
still hadn’t decided whether or not to change my name. However, my dad took me
to school, and my fear of his short temper and impatience forced me to make a
quick decision. Since he knew nothing of my impending name change, I decided
not to tell him anything. I would stick to Yin Yin for now.
As soon as I walked into the classroom, I knew I had made the right decision.
Instead of the twenty-five white faces staring back at me from the Northwood
Elementary classroom in Iowa, this classroom held a sea of Asian faces. Relief
washed over me. Since neither my dad nor my teacher, Ms. Benedict, knew about
my brief rendezvous with the name Alicia, Ms. Benedict introduced me as Yin Yin
to the class. Instantly, I fit in with the Soo Youngs and Se Hees of the class.
At that age, none of us cared about our names, for they merely served as
playground attention-grabbers. “Yin Yin, catch!” and “Yin Yin, watch this!”
were the extent of my classmates’ use of my name. Adams and Johns constituted
the minority in our Fort Lee world, so none of us Asian kids felt out of place
with our foreign names. In our eight- and nine-year-old eyes, no race
boundaries existed. Everyone was the same.
However, as we progressed into upper elementary school, our childhood innocence
and naivete evaporated as we formed cliques, endured sex education classes, and
learned about drugs. We saw different races, different body types, and
different socioeconomic classes. We were no longer all the same. With these new
feelings of loneliness and confusion, I once again desired to fit in better and
used a change of name as a band-aid for my shame.
*
When I was in fifth grade, my family moved from New Jersey to Tennessee, and I
once again seized the opportunity to change my name. I scoured my list of names
for weeks, trying on every name for size. My new favorite, Annie, seemed to suit
my goals and disposition perfectly. I imagined Annie to be the shy, chubby girl
with multi-colored Keds and hot pink Lisa Frank fanny pack staring back at me
in the mirror. Annie could be the spelling bee champion, the yearbook editor,
and everything else I aspired to be in middle school.
When we arrived in Memphis, both my parents took me to register at my new
school. In the car, we sat in silence as usual, staring straight ahead and
listening to the murmur of the engine and bunk-lunk of the tires hitting the
potholes in the road.
My mom, sitting next to me in the backseat, suddenly shifted her body to face
me.
“Are you sure you want to change your name?” she whispered in a hushed
voice so as not to provoke my dad’s impatience.
“I’m pretty sure,” I replied, more certain this time around. Truth be told, I
had regretted not changing my name in second grade when I had the chance. In
Fort Lee, due to the Asian majority, everyone revered the few white kids, often
the subjects of elementary school crushes. Since changing my skin color was out
of the question, I yearned for membership into the next level: the Asian kids
with American names. They were the ones lucky enough to hang out with the white
kids on the jungle gym while Soo Young, Min Jung, and Yin Yin played Korean
jacks on a bench by the fence.
“Okay, but you should be sure this time,” my mom whispered back, interrupting
my thoughts.
“I know,” I mouthed through clenched teeth.
Once we arrived at the wide one-story building, we walked in the blue front
doors and entered the office. The secretary greeted us as soon as we walked in
with a “Hi there, what can I do for y’all?”
She and my dad exchanged a few words, after which my dad stood at the counter
filling out forms. Bored, I stood next to my dad, reading all the names and
titles hanging by the cubicle entrances.
“What’s this?” my dad asked when he got to the middle name/nickname blank.
“Oh, y’all can add the middle name or nickname if she has one,” the secretary
responded.
“She doesn’t have a middle name,” my dad informed her. Then, he turned to me.
“So, you want a nickname?” he asked hurriedly, anxious to go back outside to
light up.
“Uhmm,” I hesitated, pretending to ponder possibilities I had not yet
considered.
“Annie?” I finally muttered, almost embarrassed to say it out loud.
“Annie?” he echoed. “Annie. Okay, how to spell that?”
“A-n-n-i-e.” I watched as he wrote down each letter.
“Okay, that’s it?” he asked the secretary.
“Yup, that’s it. Her classroom’s the one right next to this office, the first
door on the left in this hallway – Ms. Strickland’s class. Y’all have any
questions?”
My parents and I traded glances, then shook our heads. “Thanks,” my parents
said in unison with a smile and a small bow, even though we’re not Japanese. I
walked out of the building a new person. I felt older and more distinguished,
more important. I was Annie now.
Walking by Ms. Strickland’s classroom, I longed for classes to begin
immediately so I could proclaim my name change to the world, but I knew I would
have to modulate my mounting excitement for another several days. I had never
looked forward to school as much as I did during the remaining days of that
winter break. Every day when I woke up, the corners of my lips curled into a
smile as I remembered my new name. I carefully wrote “Annie” in my best cursive
penmanship on all my folders and practiced my new signature, sometimes with a
round “A” and other times with a pointy, star-like “A.” I even sat all my
stuffed animals down and practiced introducing myself as Annie.
After what seemed like months, winter break finally crawled to a close, and
classes began on the Monday after New Year’s. That morning, I awoke before my
Little Mermaid alarm clock beeped its annoying rendition of “Under the Sea.” I
donned my new Wal-mart turtleneck and arrived at the bus stop early. On the
bus, my toes danced in anticipation. Once the bus pulled into the school’s
front driveway, my attempts to conceal my elation failed, and a grin rapidly
spread across my face. First to exit the bus, I marched in the blue front doors
and entered the classroom adjacent to the office. After the bell rang and
everyone settled down, Ms. Strickland summoned me to the front of the
classroom.
“Y’all, we have a new student with us from New Jersey. This is Annie,” she
said, looking at me with a smile and a wink. This is it, I thought, the
butterflies in my stomach fluttering at full force. But instead of feeling
proud of my new name, I stood there shy and exposed in front of the sea of
white faces, waiting for the guffaws and the pointing, for kids to yell, “She’s
not Annie! She’s Yin Yin!” I waited, but heard only the shuffling of impatient
feet and the turning of pages. The overhead fan whirred, and a car drove by
outside the window. No one cared. Names meant nothing to these kids. They knew
nothing of the agony I endured to arrive at that moment. I returned to my seat,
both relieved and disappointed.
*
Within months, I ceased to acknowledge my Chinese name, discarding Yin Yin
like a used Halloween costume. I felt equal in every way to my Caucasian peers
and soon became ashamed of my Asian heritage. I spoke Mandarin only when
necessary, strayed away from the Asian crowd lest I make any Asian friends, and
refused to attend Chinese school. My parents argued with me for a while, trying
relentlessly to continue teaching me new Chinese characters and demanding that
I only converse with them in Mandarin. However, with me speaking English in
school seven or eight hours a day and with both of them at work until 5pm or
later, my parents eventually surrendered, relinquishing their efforts to help
me understand and appreciate my heritage. Relieved of a huge burden, I ignored
the sadness and disappointment in their eyes as I conversed with them in
English.
In high school, I maintained solely Caucasian friends, with the exception of a
Korean girl named Lauren who had been adopted by an American family in infancy.
She too must have been struggling with her Asian American image, obstinately
insisting that her hair was brown, not black. My futile attempts to explain
that all Asians have black hair fell on deaf ears.
Unlike Lauren’s strategy of trying to deny her Asianness, my strategy involved
simply ignoring my Asian heritage altogether. My shame hindered me from even
acknowledging my Chinese background. I believed that mingling with the Asian
crowd and speaking Mandarin would contaminate me with Asianness, as if it were
a life-threatening illness.
Being Chinese offered me no advantages in America, sentencing me to endless
hours of writing and rewriting the same Chinese characters and threatening me
with feared phone conversations with relatives on the other side of the world.
My parents often chased me around the house with the cordless phone just so I
would say hi to my grandmother. My avoidance of Mandarin had left my speaking
skills patchy at best, so evading all Mandarin conversations was my most
convenient defense mechanism against embarrassing myself with my broken
Mandarin. All in all, being Chinese had only made me feel lousy and inadequate.
*
I started to feel a hint of pride about my heritage toward the end of high
school when my mom became a naturalized citizen. When I filled out my
citizenship forms, I had the opportunity to change my name to Annie legally
just by writing it on the dotted line, but I couldn’t do it.
“Why you don’t want to change it?” my mom asked, confused. “I thought you want
to be Annie.”
“I do, I do,” I replied. “I just don’t know what to do with Yin Yin. I mean, I
can’t just get rid of it.”
“What? I thought you want to be Annie Yang. You don’t need Yin Yin.”
“Of course I need Yin Yin!” I said, shocked at her suggestion. “That’s my
name.”
“But your dad and me still know you are Yin Yin,” she said, still confused.
“Everybody else can call you Annie.”
“No, it’s not the same. It’s either got to be Annie Yin Yin Yang or Yin Yin
Annie Yang.”
“Okay fine, whatever. You decide.” Even my mom couldn’t fully understand my
dilemma.
In the end, I left the box for “Name Change” unchecked. My reluctance to drop
Yin Yin from my name revealed my growing acknowledgement and curiosity about my
Chinese identity. The heritage that once seemed useless and burdensome in
childhood and early adolescence now seemed a crucial piece as I searched for
hints of my identity before fleeing the coop for college and the real world.
However, this phase faded faster than it had arisen. After becoming a citizen,
I continued to ignore my Asianness. During the last few months of high school,
as I started parting with my circle of white friends, I went to prom with a
white football player, hung out at Starbucks every evening with a group of
white friends, and even started dating one of my white friends. At the end of
the summer, I left for Philadelphia certain that I could secure a new group of
white friends before fall classes started at the University of Pennsylvania.
*
During New Student Orientation, I kept my eyes peeled for potential Caucasian
peers I could befriend. For the first few days, Meghan and I stuck together
after meeting at a pre-orientation program. She was Caucasian with brown hair
and long eyelashes and fit my target friend description perfectly. At the
annual house barbecue, Meghan and I stood together, uncomfortably crowded on
all sides by the swarms of other new freshmen packed into the courtyard for the
promise of free food. Snippets of conversations saturated the air around us, but
Meghan and I stood silent. When our eyes accidentally met, we smiled and quickly
looked away.
Later, in the food line, a perky Korean girl named Crystal greeted me. Crystal
was one of those never-gains-weight types that most girls envy. After finishing
her seconds, she saw some other Asian girls she’d met earlier. Together, the six
of us went upstairs to Crystal’s room, where she showed us her stash of
kim-chee. Everyone laughed and nodded knowingly as Crystal joked about
offending her roommate with her stinky jars of Asian food.
I sat on the corner of the bed laughing along with them, feeling right at home
amidst this group of strangers. Though I had known Meghan for almost a week and
these girls for only a few minutes, I knew that Meghan and I would never be as
close as I felt to these girls. We connected instantly through our shared
experiences and Asian heritage, the same heritage I had been trying to hide for
nearly a decade. I thought these Asian girls would talk about Korean pop music
or the upcoming Asian dance group performance. Instead, they laughed and joked
about the same things that my white friends and I talked about. They were
bananas and Twinkies, just like me—yellow on the outside, white on the inside.
*
Though I continued trying to make white friends, by the end of my first
semester, all my college friends were Asian, all with American names. When I
returned to Tennessee to visit my high school friends, I felt out of place. My
first night back in Tennessee, my friends and I went to the Spaghetti Warehouse
for dinner. We sat at a table near the center of the giant room. As I looked
around, I saw only white faces: white families with two-year-olds slurping
spaghetti in high chairs, white high school girls hanging out on a Friday
night, and white waitresses asking for our drink orders. I was painfully aware
that I was the only non-white person in the entire restaurant. No one treated
me any differently than when I had lived in Tennessee, no one laughed or called
me a chink, no one seemed to notice. The only thing that had changed was my
perception of the situation. In high school, I felt white, dressed white, and
talked white because I had convinced myself that I was white. That night at the
Spaghetti Warehouse, I still dressed white and talked white, but I certainly did
not feel white. Sitting across from my white friends, I knew they would never
truly understand. Along with everyone else, they knew I was Asian long before I
did and accepted me as such. All those years, I was only fooling myself.
Once I returned to Penn, I felt more Asian than ever before. To my parents’
utter surprise, I became so proud of my Asianness and so passionate about
rediscovering the culture I had ignored for so long that I registered for a
Chinese reading and writing class during my sophomore year. Within the walls of
that classroom, I responded to Yin Yin eagerly and was proud for the first time
in years that I too had an authentic Chinese name. In that classroom I realized
that my name has a history and a meaning connecting me to millions of people who
share my language and experiences. Though Annie connects me to the culture in
which I currently reside, Yin Yin gives me the roots that connect me to my
family and to my past.
No matter what I add, remove, or change in my name, Yin Yin will always be a
part of me. I have struggled for so many years to fight her, but from now on, I
will fight to keep her.
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